


When The Day Met The Night

by BleedingInk



Series: You're The Song Stuck In My Head [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Composer!Castiel, F/M, Mentions of Substance Abuse, Rockstar!Meg, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 67,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4903648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg Masters is a jaded, washed up rockstar who still owes her label one last album. Castiel Novak is a struggling composer trying to catch a break in a hostile Hollywood. Their business relationship starts rocky and it goes downhill from there, but there is one thing they can’t deny they both love: music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Perfect Song

“GOOD MORNING, L. A.!”

Castiel jolted awake and fell from the hard surface he was sleeping on, onto the harder surface of the floor.

“… I’m Gabriel Speigh, a. k. a. the Trickster, and you’re listening to my show on this sunny, warm morning in California. Like we ever had any other kind of morning, am I right?”

The sound of rolling drums and canned laughter drowned out Castiel’s groans of pain as he stood up. He looked through the bars to the officer standing next to the radio and sipping coffee from her plastic cup.

“How you doing, Sleeping Beauty?” she mocked him.

Castiel didn’t bother to answer. He was contemplating how he had managed to fall so low that he ended up spending the night at a cell in the police station. He knew Zachariah, his landlord, was a bit of a dick, but he never imagine he would come to his apartment to find all his stuff scattered outside, and that his key wouldn’t work when he tried the lock.

“Nor can do, son,” Zachariah had said, looking at him with contempt from the crack of the door he had bothered opening. “Your rent is more than overdue, and if you can’t pay it, I got to rent that place to someone who will.”

“Please, Mr. Smith,” Castiel had begged, forgotten all dignity at the prospect of facing homelessness. “I just need a little more time…”

“I gave you more than enough time, Novak,” Zachariah had replied. “Go to a motel or something.”

And he’d slammed the door on Castiel’s face.

The problem with that logic was, if Castiel didn’t have the money to pay for his rent, it was pretty clear that he didn’t have any money to afford a motel. Hell, he couldn’t afford a stupid subway ticket to take him anywhere near a motel. So what he’d done instead was picked up the most important things (his keyboard case, some clothes, his phone) and got out of the building to start calling the people he knew in the city to ask if he could crash somewhere.

Rachel and Michael had told him they’d already left the town, Balthazar had “company” and Raphael didn’t even bother answering the phone. Castiel had hesitated on the edge of calling Charlie, but they weren’t more than casual acquaintances and she had done a lot more that she had to for him already.

Luckily for him, it was a warm summer night in Los Angeles. And that was about the only silver lining he found, because he was tired, hungry and humiliated by the time he’d started thinking the park bench he was sitting on wouldn’t be such an uncomfortable place to sleep in. He’d used his duffle bag as a pillow, covered himself with his old brown trench coat and fallen asleep hugging his keyboard, paranoid that someone might steal it. He remembered thinking that at least things couldn’t get much worse.

And then he’d been woken up an hour later and promptly escorted to a holding cell next to other “vagrants.”

“I’m not a vagrant!” he’d tried explaining. “I just… I’ve had a bad day, okay?”

The police officer that’d arrested him (a short woman with black hair) had looked at him with pity in her eyes as she locked the cell’s door.

“Sleep it off, kid,” she’d said, obviously thinking that Castiel was either high or drunk. “You can tell me your sob story in the morning.”

And now that same cop lady was opening the door for him and offering him a hand to get him up.

“Bet you things look much better in the daylight,” she said. “Sit there while I look for your things,” she added, pointing at her desk. “You can have one of those if you want.”

Castiel looked at the croissants, wondering if he’d get in trouble for eating more than one. But the ferocious grumble on his stomach convinced him. He grabbed one and practically shoved it into his face. The Trickster kept speaking on the radio.

“… and you won’t believe who just updated her page announcing her second album,” he was saying. “I’ll give you a clue: she used to play guitar for a certain rock band and she was very good at it. Probably because the noise the others made covered up her awfulness.”

Cue the drum rolls and more canned laughter. The man was certainly vicious, but Castiel didn’t have much to do but listening to him.

“Meg Masters, former guitarist of the band Satan’s Brides and professional walking disaster, has decided to bless us with her second solo album, because apparently the first one wasn’t bad enough,” Gabriel said. “She says in her blog the writing process is about to begin and if everything goes according to plan, she’ll be releasing her new material at some point later this year. Let’s hope someone does us all a favor and throws a wrench on those plans. Now would be the time when I put one of her hits on air, but, uh… she didn’t have one. Also, I don’t want to depress you, dear listeners. So instead, here’s Satan’s Brides 2007 number one single, ‘ _Out of the Pit’_.”

The lady cop came back as a very loud guitar riff came on the radio. She put Castiel’s duffle bag and his keyboard on the desk, and he had to resist the impulse to jump on the case and open it right there to make sure everything was okay.

“You were hungry, huh?” the cop commented, noting all her croissants had disappeared. Castiel didn’t have the courage to look her in the eye, so instead he stared at her badge and noticed that her name was ‘Mills, J.’

“I, uh… I didn’t have much to eat yesterday,” Castiel confessed, feeling how the blood rushed to his head.

The same look of compassion appeared in Officer Mills’ face as she sat down in front of him.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You came here looking for a place where your talents could really shine, but you found out the hard way there were a thousand like you and that this city was ready to chew you up and spit you out, huh?”

“Something like that,” Castiel admitted. The story was a bit longer than that, but Officer Mills had got the gist of it. Officer Mills nodded, solemnly, like she had seen it a thousand times before.

“You want a piece of advice, son?” she said, as she filled out some papers on her desk and offered them up for Castiel to sign up. “Go home.”

Castiel grabbed the pen hesitantly, his eyes passing over the letters that stated the cops were giving him back everything he had when he had been taken into custody the night before. Everything he had in the world right now.

“I don’t have money to go home,” he muttered, as he stamped his signature on the bottom of the page.

“You don’t have someone who can send you some?” Officer Mills asked.

Castiel cringed at the idea of calling his mother or worse, calling April, to beg her to send her enough money for him to buy a bus ticket. He hated that he would have to go back home like a dog with his tail between his legs, and explain that maybe he had been wrong to leave in the first place. It’d be years before he heard the end of it, if he heard it at all. Ten years in, he imagined his family reunited around the Thanksgiving dinner table and Naomi, his mother, laughing and commenting something along the lines of: “Do you remember when Castiel went to live to L. A. for a couple of months? What a disastrous decision that turned out to be! Let me remind you of everything he did wrong.”

He didn’t think he’d be able to stand it, but by the grim look of things, it seemed like that was exactly what was about to happen. He sighed and picked up his stuff from the table.

“Thank you very much, Officer Mills,” he said.

“Hang in there, kid,” the cop told him. “It’ll get better.”

Castiel doubted that very much, but he still tried to straighten his shoulders and don’t show the world how crestfallen he felt as he left the station.

 

* * *

 

“That was ‘ _Out of the Pit_ ’, by Satan’s Brides,” the Trickster said when the song ended. “A song from the good old days when Meg Masters was a relatively decent guitarist and still relevant…”

“Turn that thing off,” Jo groaned.

“Sorry,” Dean said, turning off the radio just as they stopped on a red light. A Led Zeppelin song came on instead, and he drummed his fingers against the wheel animatedly.

Jo turned to look at Meg, who was staring outside the window at the heavy traffic and the buildings.

“Meg, you can’t let what that stupid little man says bring you down,” she told her.

“It doesn’t,” Meg replied with a shrug. “And besides, he does have a point.”

“He so does not have a point,” Jo complained. “Do you think he has a point?” she asked Dean.

“Well…” the driver began.

“Don’t answer that,” Jo interrupted him. “He doesn’t. End of discussion.”

The compassion Meg felt for her producer/manager was mercifully hidden behind her aviator glasses. Meg’s first solo album had also been Jo’s first job as a producer, and it’d been such a tremendous failure that if Jo’s mother hadn’t owned half of the record label, they both probably would’ve been kicked out in the most degrading manner. As it was, Jo had convinced the executives of Roadhouse Records to give Meg a second chance, even though Meg didn’t want a second chance and the executives didn’t want to give her another chance.

Meg knew that because she had been shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation Jo and Ellen had kept behind closed doors when they were discussing whether to enforce the contract that said she needed to give at least three albums to the label or to just let her go.

“Jo, you took a huge risk and it didn’t work out,” Ellen had said. “It happens. You need to accept that and move on.”

“So you’re saying I should just move on from my friend?”

That had been really nice of her to say. To Meg’s knowledge, she had never treated Jo with nothing but utter contempt and scorn.

“I didn’t say that,” Ellen had replied. “You don’t have to stop being friends with Meg.”

“Oh, yeah, ‘cause that’s going to be a super awesome conversation,” Jo had said, and Meg could just imagine her rolling her eyes like she always did when she was exasperated. “ _’Hey, you’re fired. Wanna hang out later for drinks?’_ ”

“You’re missing the point,” Ellen had said. “What I’m trying to tell you is that Meg… maybe she’s not the right artist for our label.”

Spoken like a true executive producer. Meg had almost wanted to laugh. Jo had gone a few seconds without answering. Meg had got up, picked up her purse and prepared to make a swift exit, pretty certain that’d be the point where Jo agreed with her mom and she would find herself without a job. Again.

“Listen, mom, statistically and legally, it’s not convenient for us to let go of Meg right now,” Jo had said, changing tactics. “If we fire her after only one album, she can sue us for breach of contract. But if we do so after two albums and both are a flop, there’s a clause in the contract that says that situation would be in our favor.”

Meg hadn’t known that. She usually skipped the small letters in those things before she signed them. Of course, she should know better because that had been exactly what got her in trouble the first time.

Ellen had reflected about it.

“Fine,” she’d agreed in the end. Jo had let out a squeal of excitement, and Meg had imagined her throwing her arms around her mother. “But honey, if you fail again, I don’t think I can protect her in front of the board. Hell, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to protect you.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, mom,” Jo had assured her. “This time we’re going to get a hit album. You’ll see.”

Meg still wondered how exactly Jo planned to pull that off. At this point in her career, Meg wasn’t so much an artist as a punch line for people like the Trickster and a cautionary tale for musicians everywhere.

“This is what happens when you antagonize your bosses,” she imagined them telling whatever young poor devil had just sold their soul for a bit of fame. “Be careful now, because you could end up like Meg Masters.”

No matter what she wrote, she was sure to become a laughing stock in the tabloids, so why even bother?

“I’m not sure about this, Jo,” she had been clear when the blonde producer had come to see her about it.

“Well, I am,” Jo had replied, confidently. “I know you still have it in you, Meg. And besides, I already updated your blog.”

And that had been it.

Now, in that sunny Californian morning, Dean was driving them to the publishing company where Meg was supposed to pick a song and a maybe a songwriter to work with her. She was already pitying the random fool who got the job.

“Typical,” Dean huffed after they went around the building’s block three or four times.

“Why don’t you just drop us here and you go to find a parking space?” Jo suggested.

“Like hell, what kind of bodyguard will I be if I just left you out of my sight?” Dean said.

“What do you think, that Mark Chapman is going to jump on us from an alley?” Jo asked, exasperated as Dean turned around the corner once more.

“Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Meg commented under her breath. Jo didn’t find the joke funny.

“Go around the corner again,” she ordered.

Finally, after twenty minutes that felt eternal, Dean found a parking space big enough to hold the company’s SUV (Meg thought half of the traffic problems in Los Angeles would be solved if famous people would stop going everywhere in black SUVs and limousines). Meg put on a baseball cap over her bleached blonde hair and made sure her sunglasses were in place before leaving the truck.

“You know, this look just screams _‘I’m someone famous, please take a picture of me’_ ,” she complained to Jo.

“You’re famous,” Jo pointed out.

“Somewhat famous,” Meg argued. “It doesn’t help that Wonder Boy here is walking behind us looking exactly like a bodyguard.”

They made it to the door of the publishing company’s building without any killer trying to shoot Meg, which she predicted was going to be the highest point of her day.

“Excuse me,” Jo said to the receptionist. “Hi, I’m Joanna Harvelle from Roadhouse Records. We have an appointment.”

The receptionist (who was chewing gum and looked so immensely bored it was almost a work of art) held a finger up in the air to indicate them to wait. Dean and Jo exchanged looks and shrugs while Meg sat in the red armchair meant for visitors and stared at the ceiling like that was the most interesting thing in the universe. After the receptionist was done being unnecessarily rude and indifferent, she pulsed an intercom.

“Bradbury, your appointment is here,” she informed. Then she turned to Jo with a fake grin. “She’s on her way.”

A minute later, a redhead girl with a pixie haircut bolted from the elevator and stumbled on her own feet. Despite that she stood up with a great smile and extended her hand towards Jo.

“Hi, I’m Charlie Bradbury!” she greeted her.

“Yes, we talked on the phone,” Jo replied, shaking her hand. “This is Dean, and this is…”

“Meg Masters!” Charlie exclaimed so loud that even the receptionist looked up in surprise. “Hi, so nice to meet you! Big fan. It’s so great that you chose our small publishing agency to look for a song. I’ve been listening and classifying all the demos we have according to your music style and the people you’ve mentioned are your biggest influences…”

Jo cleared her throat loudly. Charlie seemed to realize that what she was saying was immensely creepy, so she thankfully shut her mouth. Meg just stood there awkwardly, not sure what to say. She didn’t think she could handle another ray of sunshine in her life; she had more than enough with Jo.

“Come this way!” Charlie indicated them, finally. “So, Meg… can I call you Meg? Can I ask you a question?”

“I’m not legally allowed to talk about my departure from Satan’s Brides,” Meg said in the monotonous tone she used when paparazzi interrogated her about the exact same thing.

“Oh,” Charlie said, but she continued undeterred: “I was actually going to ask about the hair.”

Meg was taken aback for a minute.

“The hair?”

“Yes, why bleach it?” Charlie continued. “I liked it better when you were a brunette.”

Meg stared at the girl in stunned silence for several seconds. She had met all sort of people who thought they were entitled to comment on her looks, and it irritated her every single time. She thought she was used to it by now, but the impulse to choke the life of Charlie was becoming overwhelmingly strong.

Jo cleared her throat again.

“I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want,” Charlie said, opening her eyes wide in horror. “It’s your hair, of course; it should be nobody’s business why you changed it.”

Meg turned to her producer, who looked as innocent and petit as always.

“Did you establish a sign system to shut her up when she steps over the line?” Meg asked her.

“No, that’s ridiculous,” Jo lied without even batting an eye. She would never know exactly how much Meg appreciated that.

Charlie led them to an office with a small meeting table, a laptop and some speakers on the table.

“Please, take a seat,” she indicated. Meg and Jo sat side by side while Dean stood near the door with his arms crossed and looking tougher than he needed to. “Do you want something to drink? We just got this new coffee machine that makes the milk foam…”

“Thank you, Charlie,” Jo cut her off. “Let’s just listen to the demos.”

“Yes, sure, of course,” Charlie said, wringing her hands nervously as she sat in front of the laptop. “Right, this first song is from…”

“I don’t care,” Meg interrupted her. “Just put some on and I’ll tell you when I hear something I like, okay?”

“Okay, yes, sure, let’s do that,” Charlie nodded, like nothing Meg could suggest would ever be wrong. “Here it goes.”

She pressed a key in her laptop, and a rapid guitar riff began and a woman’s voice started singing about what a good time she was planning on having tonight.

“No,” Jo said, shaking her head. Charlie stopped the song.

“Oh, come on,” Meg complained. “That sounded fun.”

“Did you catch the part where she said she was drinking ‘til she passed out?” Jo pointed out. “No singing about excessive partying, it’s bad for your image.”

Meg groaned, crossed her arm and sank on her seat like a little girl who had just been told off. Charlie looked like Jo had just eliminated half the options of her list, but she didn’t lose her smile.

“No matter,” she said. “Let’s go on to the next one.”

The four hours that followed were torture. Every time Meg liked a song, Jo reminded her she was supposed to be clean and projecting that image unto her younger fans. Every time Jo liked a song, Meg spent a good deal of time telling her why she’d rather be dead than sing that: it was too retro, or the lyrics were too stupid, or it sounded just like a rip-off of her old band.

“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie kept repeating, even though it was obvious that the options she had prepared had been rejected long ago and now she was desperately grasping for straws. “We’ll find something, you’ll see…”

Dean left twice to help himself to some coffee, and then once more to go to the bathroom. After a while, he’d given up his tough bodyguard pose and took out his phone to play Angry Birds. Meg knew it was Angry Birds because once the snorting of pigs totally ruined what would have been the beginning of a perfectly decent song.

“Sorry,” Dean said, putting his phone away when the three girls glared at him. “Hey, you girls want me to make a run for lunch?”

“You might as well,” Jo sighed. “Seems like we’re going to be here a while.”

Meg took out her pack of cigarettes. She knew she wasn’t supposed to, but she guessed that if she was swift enough…

“I-I’m sorry,” Charlie stuttered. “You can’t… you can’t smoke in here.”

Meg chewed on her cigarette, considering the possibility of lighting it anyway, but Jo’s severe look discouraged her in the end. She put it back on the pack and hit her forehead against the table.

“Maybe we should try this somewhere else,” she suggested, tiredly.

Charlie opened her eyes wide and started, like she was on the edge of a panic attack as she hysterically surfed through her samples to find something that convinced them.

“Give me that,” Jo said, impatient, and pulled the computer towards her. “What about that one?”

“Oh, t-that one is very slow,” Charlie said. “Almost like a ballad, I don’t think…”

Jo pressed the key anyway.

Just as Charlie had warned them, a few slow piano notes filled the air. When Jo was about to stop the song, the lyrics began. A man was signing in deep, gruff voice:

_And she was terrible and beautiful_

_She had the universe in her eyes_

_On dark nights I laid by her_

_And her eyes burned brighter than any sun…_

Meg lifted her head very slowly.

“That one,” she said.

“What?”

“I want that song,” she said, pointing at the computer. “I want it.”

“Oh, okay,” Jo said, and exchanged a disconcerted look with Charlie. “I mean, it sounds a little bit… folkish. Are you sure…?”

“And I want the guy who wrote it,” Meg added. “Let’s hire him so he helps me write the album.”

“Can we do that?” Jo asked.

Charlie didn’t get that the song was directed at her at first, too disconcerted by Meg’s sudden resolution.

“Oh, yes, sure, of course, he doesn’t have any other compromises right now, as far as I know,” she said. “In fact, I could give him a call, see if he’s available and he can meet us here…”

“You do that,” Jo said.

Charlie left the room with her cellphone already in hand, but Meg barely paid attention. She was too busy breathing in and out to the gentle rhythm of the song:

_A million light-years away_

_Lives forever, my star-eyed girl…_

 

* * *

 

Castiel had spent the last two hours watching the buses in the station come and go. The memory of the last phone call he had to make still stung him.

“Well, of course I can send you some money, sweetie,” Naomi had said. Just by the tone of her voice, Castiel could imagine her with her favorite gesture of contempt in her face: lips twitched, eyebrows raised, her entire demeanor letting you know that you’ve fucked up greatly and she would gladly fix everything for you, as long as you didn’t say anything when she forever reminded you about it. “I’ll let you know once I make the deposit. Have a safe trip.”

So Castiel had had to wait by the closest ATM until his mother got dressed and ready to leave the house, which was always a slow process, and then until the transaction was complete. He went to several bus stations before he found one that had buses that actually went all the way to Pontiac, Illinios without so many stops on the way. Still, it was going to be a long couple of days of incessant travelling.

His cellphone rang.

“Hey, cutie pie!” April chirped on the other end. “What happened? Your mom called and told me you’re coming home.”

“Yeah,” Castiel sighed. “Well…”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” April interrupted him. “Dad’s kept your spot; you can come work for him again.”

Castiel tightened his lips. April’s father was an undertaker, and playing the piano during funerals wasn’t exactly what Castiel thought he would be doing for the rest of his life.

“Yeah, about that,” he said. “I was thinking maybe I could try something else? You know, give piano lessons to kids or…”

“Don’t be silly,” April said. “Why would you do that when you have a perfectly safe position with my dad? I mean, it’s so very generous of him offering you your old job back after you went away in that stupid quest of yours. Would it kill you to show some gratitude?”

No, it wouldn’t kill him. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly sure gratitude was what he felt.

“I guess I’ll see you soon, April,” he sighed.

“Oh, yes!” April said, in the same cheerful tone she always used when she was excited. “And when you come back, we can start planning the wedding!”

Castiel’s throat closed.

“April, I told you I needed time to think about that…”

“Honey, you’ve had plenty of time to think about it while you were away,” April said. “And now you’re coming back. What more could you want than start a new life with me?”

Indeed. What more could he ask for?

 _More_ , he thought bitterly. _So much more_.

“I’ll be there on Saturday,” Castiel said. If April noticed how defeated he sounded, she didn’t comment on it.

“Okie dokie, sweetie, see you then!”

Castiel ended the call and looked at the time. His bus should be arriving any minute now and… yes, it probably was that one that had just entered the platform. He stood up, picked up his keyboard case and his duffle bag and was about to take a step towards it when his phone rang again.

“Cas, where are you?” Charlie said once he picked up.

“Uh, I can’t talk right now,” Castiel said, watching how people began crowding the bus. “Listen, Charlie…”

“Never mind. You need to get your ass here right now,” she said, obviously not interested at all in his excuses. “You will never guess who’s interested in buying your song.”


	2. This Is Hollywood

Jo and Meg were watching Charlie talk on the phone through the glass door.

“Alright, you can say it,” Meg said. Jo looked at her with feigned disconcert. “Say what you’re thinking,” Meg insisted. “The song is corny as hell; it’s not my style at all…”

Jo sighed and leaned forward on the table.

“Your style is the last thing I’m worried about,” she said.

Meg raised an eyebrow as if she was saying: _Well, then, what is it?_

“We promised the label a new record by the end of the summer,” Jo reminded her. “I was hoping you would pick one or two songs to get a head start, not that you would want to write the whole thing from scratch.”

“That’s what I did last time, and the critics accused of not sounding ‘organic’ enough,” Meg reminded her, drawing air quotes with her fingers. “What’s so wrong with wanting to try something different this time?”

“Because I know how your creative process goes,” Jo said. “You’re gonna procrastinate like hell and we’ll be lucky if we have three songs ready within six months.”

“Oh, well, thank you for the trust,” Meg said, rolling her eyes.

Charlie came back into the office.

“Castiel is on the other side of town,” she informed them. “He’s going to catch a taxi and come here right away, but…”

“But with the traffic, it’s gonna take some time,” Jo guessed and Charlie nodded apologetically. “Don’t worry. It seems our lunch has arrived.”

Dean entered the office balancing several boxes of pizza and bottles of mineral water.

“Alright, one gourmet lunch coming through!” he announced.

Pizza and water was hardly gourmet, but Meg was starving. An hour later, she was still forcing pizza down her throat when a man with black hair wandered down the hallway, looking around like he was completely lost. Meg looked at his creased clothes and his worn-out keyboard case with mild interest. She wouldn’t have guessed that was her new songwriter if Charlie hadn’t stood up to announce him.

“There he is!” she said. “I’ll go call him.”

“Oh, awesome,” Jo muttered. “You hired a hipster.”

Dean snorted, and Meg shrugged. At least the guy looked like he could make things a little interesting.

 

* * *

 

“Cas!” Charlie called out, and Castiel turned around with relief. He thought he was going to wander through that hall for hours and he would have to start awkwardly knocking on doors. “The hell, dude?” his friend said. “This is a job interview. Why are you dressed like the Santa Monica’s least fashionable hobo?”

“I’ve… had a rough night,” Castiel sighed.

“I’ll say,” Charlie replied as she began pulling Castiel’s red hoodie like that would iron out the creases. “Okay, Meg Masters liked your song a lot, apparently, so you’ve already done half of the job. But I have to warn you, she’s a little bit of a diva,” she added, as she stood on the tip of her toes and licked her hand to fix his hair a little bit. “Don’t mention her former band.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Castiel said. “I don’t know anything about her former band.”

“Really?” Charlie asked. “You’ve never heard of Satan’s Brides?”

Castiel reflected about it for a moment.

“I think my mom’s church picketed one of their concerts?” he suggested. It was hard to tell because his mother’s church vocally disapproved many causes a year.

Charlie grimaced as she finished dusting Castiel. He wasn’t sure all of that would make his appearance any more presentable, but he realized that wasn’t for his sake bur for Charlie’s.

“Okay,” she said, nervously. “Let’s do this.”

She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him towards the office. The table was covered in empty pizza boxes, and there were two blonde women and a guy in a plaid shirt finishing the leftovers.

“Miss Masters, Miss Harvelle,” Charlie said. “This is Castiel Novak, the author of ‘ _Star-eyed Girl’_.”

The woman closest to Castiel tilted her head at him for a second, opened her mouth… and let out a loud, crass belch. Both Charlie and Castiel took a step backwards, startled.

“Sorry,” she said, hitting her chest with a closed fist, but her smirk contradicted her.

Castiel’s eyes darted in her direction almost automatically. He had never met anyone famous, and Meg Masters was… well, pretty much exactly what he’d imagined: she was leaning back on her chair and fidgeting with a pack of cigarettes, like she couldn’t stay still even for a second. She was wearing a frayed sleeveless shirt and aviator glasses, even though they were inside, and it was hard to tell if she was looking at him or not. That made him slightly nervous. Everything about her made him slightly nervous. It was as if even though she wasn’t saying anything, her sole presence was loud to get everybody staring at her.

The other woman sighed deeply, like she was used to that kind of display and stood up to offer Castiel a hand. She was wearing a white shirt and dress pants, and her elegance was a sharp contrast with Meg’s casual appearance.

“Hi, I’m Jo Harvelle from Roadhouse Records,” she introduced herself. “I’m the musical producer of that five-year-old child over there,” she added, pointing at Meg Masters.

“Nice to meet you,” Castiel said, glad that at least someone seemed normal in the room.

“Have a seat,” Jo invited him. “Tell us a little about yourself, Castiel.”

“Well, I-I…” Castiel stuttered, suddenly painfully aware of the stain on his red hoodie and the fact that every eye in the room was fixed on him. “I… I have a degree in Music Composition from the College of Fine Arts of Illinois State University…”

“Why you wrote the song?”

Castiel turned to look at Meg. She had taken off her glasses and leaned on the table, watching him with curiosity, like he was an exhibit on a zoo.

“Excuse me?”

“Why you wrote it?” Meg asked again. “What’s the story behind it? Did you think the words sounded pretty? Were you trying to woo a girl?”

“Well… an old friend from college called me up a few months ago,” Castiel explained. “He was filming an independent movie and he needed someone to write the score. The music was going to be part of that, but the production of the movie was halted when they ran out of money. I later added the lyrics and sent the song to several music publishers.”

“So this was going to be your ‘ _My Heart Will Go On_ ’?” asked Meg.

“Something like that,” Castiel admitted. Meg’s expression was unreadable, so he couldn’t know if she was satisfied or disappointed with the explanation. “I’m sorry it doesn’t have a more interesting story.”

“It’s fine,” she replied, with a shrug. “It’s all I needed to know.”

She threw an eloquent look in Jo’s direction, who nodded. Castiel had the feeling he’d just missed an entire conversation between the two.

“Alright then. Roadhouse’s legal team can have the contract drafted by tomorrow,” Jo said, as she took out her cellphone and started typing a text. “We can give you $5000 in advance for ‘ _Star-eyed Girl_ ’ and fifteen per cent of royalties based on record sales. Does that seem like a fair deal to you?”

Castiel had absolutely no idea if that was a fair deal or not, so he glanced at Charlie, who nodded vigorously for him to accept.

“Yes, absolutely,” Castiel said, immediately.

“Awesome,” Jo said. “Also, do you have any problem with changing your current accommodations?”

“Why?” Castiel said, squinting.

“The company’s rented the Silverbell Mansion for the duration of the writing and recording of the record,” Jo explained. “Meg believes it’s better for her creativity that she shares a living space with those involved in the process so you can work together on daily basis.”

Castiel was too stunned for a moment to answer. He eyed Meg, who had put her feet up on the table and was currently picking her teeth with her nails.

“We’d be roommates,” she said, mockingly, almost as if she was daring Castiel to accept that challenge.

The fact was Castiel had spent his college years sharing a very small college dorm with Balthazar and his conquests (he’d once walked in on him having a ménage-à-what’s-French-for-twelve), so the possibility didn’t scare him as much as it could have.

“Well, my current accommodations are sort of inexistent, so… I’m alright with that,” he said, with an uncomfortable smile.

“But where are you staying?” asked Jo, frowning.

“I’m… crashing wherever I can,” Castiel said, hoping it sounded like he meant friend’s couches and not park benches. Nobody was remotely convinced. The man in the plaid shirt (who had remained almost invisible and quiet all that time) took out his wallet and put a ten dollar bill on Meg’s extended hand.

“Alright,” Jo sighed. “How about we rent a room for you at Meg’s hotel and we move you two to the Silverbell Mansion tomorrow morning?”

“Oh,” Castiel said, still a little bit shocked. “Yes, yes, of course. That sounds…”

“Great,” Jo interrupted her. “You have things to discuss with Charlie, I take it. So we’ll wait for you downstairs.”

Meg stood up and took a long moment to stretch her arms.

“I’ll see you around,” she said, grazing Castiel’s shoulder with her fingers as she and her team walked out.

Castiel raised a finger, confused, and turned to Charlie.

“Was that a flirtation?” he asked.

“Who cares?” Charlie said. She clapped her hands, thrilled. “Cas, this is great! Your actual first job as a songwriter!”

Up until the moment Charlie said it out loud, Castiel hadn’t been able to believe. It seemed like a second ago he was about to board a bus back home, and now he had a job that would guarantee him to stay in California for at least a year.

“Aren’t you happy?” Charlie asked, patting him on the shoulder before sitting in front of her computer.

“It’s… all very sudden,” Castiel said. “I don’t think I’ve had time to realize what’s going on.”

“Well, that’s how the business works,” Charlie said. “Come with me, I need you to sign some things.”

“What things?” Castiel asked, following her down the hallway.

“Copyright stuff and the contract that says you’re going to give us a percentage of your percentage of royalties that _‘Star-eyed Girl’_ might generate,” Charlie explained.

Castiel would soon come to understand that getting into “the business” implied a lot of signings and percentages.

 

* * *

 

“There we go,” said the driver, who had introduced himself as Dean. “Not too shabby, huh?”

Castiel looked around, mesmerized. The room was decorated in calming beige and white tones, with a bed that could easily contain at least three people. The carpet so soft and clean he felt ashamed to be stepping on it with his disgusting snickers. There was a mini-bar of lustrous wood and chrome underneath a plasma TV, and he suddenly remembered he hadn’t eaten anything that day besides the croissants and a sandwich he bought at the bus station.

“This is… are you sure it’s okay if I stay here?” he asked, turning to Jo.

“Absolutely, we’ll just deduct the difference from your payment,” Jo said. She was still writing in her cellphone, as she had been the whole way there while Meg looked outside the window and Castiel sat between the two, feeling slightly ignored.

“Oh, you don’t… you don’t have to do that…” Castiel stammered when he realized Dean was carrying his duffle bag and his keyboard.

“Yes, I kinda have to,” Dean laughed. “It’s my job. Where do you want them?”

“Just… just there it’s fine,” Castiel said, making a vague gesture around.

Dean put his things on the bed. He seemed somewhat amused at Castiel’s awkwardness.

“Okay, we’ll leave you to it,” Jo smiled, finally putting away her cellphone. “Tomorrow morning our lawyer will bring the contract, and we’ll sign it over breakfast.”

“Yeah, they serve really big breakfasts here,” Dean added. “So don’t go crazy on the mini-bar snacks. I’m in the room across yours if you need anything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Castiel said. “And I wanted to thank you again for this…”

The door had already closed behind them.

“…opportunity,” Castiel mumbled to himself.

Well, he had an entire night ahead for himself in a luxurious hotel, so he might as well make the most of it.

The first thing he did was getting rid of his filthy clothes and jumping in the shower. The hot water was just what he needed for his tired muscles, and the hotel’s soap had a calming lavender scent. He scrubbed his skin furiously, trying to get rid of all the dirt accumulated during the last forty-eight hours and when he was done, he just stood there for another ten minutes, soaking, breathing in the vapor.

He wrapped himself in one of the soft robes the hotel offered and stood in front of the mirror to shave the stubble that had gathered up on his cheeks. Once he’d washed out the cream, he looked back in the mirror and he was immensely relieved to recognize his face. After the humiliating night and agitated day he’d had, he was starting to feel like a human being again.

Despite Dean’s warning, he couldn’t help but to ravage the mini-bar. He was halfway through his second bag of chips when it occurred to him that he should call his mother and let her know about this recent development.

“Cas, honey, where are you?” Naomi asked as soon as he greeted her. “Did you catch the bus okay? Is it going on schedule?”

“No, I didn’t catch the bus,” Castiel replied. “Something unbelievable happened.”

He told her about Charlie’s call and the contract he’d been offered. He left out the part it was for a woman who bleached her hair, wore skinny jeans and used to play in a band called Satan’s Brides. He didn’t think his mother would take that well.

Not that she sounded too happy about the rest of it, either.

“Well… well, if that’s your decision,” she said.

“Don’t say that, Mother,” Castiel sighed, frustrated. “Don’t say it as if you think I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m going to blow it.”

“I did not say that, Castiel.”

“You’ve implied it,” he groaned.

“Don’t be so sensitive,” Naomi replied. “Can you blame me for being a little bit disappointed? I was so excited to finally see you.”

“Could you at least pretend to be happy I got this chance?” Castiel asked, tiredly.

“Oh, and April is disappointed too,” Naomi added. “Hold on, I’ll pass you with her.”

“What? April’s there?”

“Cutie pie? What’s this nonsense that you’re not coming home after all?” April asked. There was a warning tone in her voice, the kind that announced a perfect storm if Castiel even dared to say something she didn’t want to hear. “Your mom and I have been preparing your favorite cake for your welcome home party.”

He swallowed loudly, but he was not about to back down from this fight. He tried to explain about the call and how excited he was, but then a whimpering noise interrupted him.

“April, please don’t cry,” he begged. “Listen, this is a once in a lifetime chance…”

“Yes, yes, of course, I understand,” April sobbed. “I mean, your career is so obviously more important to you that our relationship…”

Castiel felt the beginning of a massive headache piling up behind his eyes. And he had been feeling so well not fifteen minutes ago.

“You’re clearly upset right now,” Castiel sighed. “So maybe we should…”

“No, don’t you dare try to hang up on me!” she screeched. “You hang up and it’s over, Castiel, do you hear me?”

“Well, what would you have me do?” he groaned. “Go back on my word, tell the people from the record company that thanks, but no thanks?”

“If you cared at all about us, you would!” April accused him. “You’d come back so we can have the life we were always meant to have!”

The stab of guilt he felt at that sentence wasn’t enough to dissipate Castiel’s anger. Yes, April had made it very clear from the beginning of their relationship that she wanted to get married and have a family, and Castiel had been on board with that as long as it didn’t suffocate his dreams. But as time went by, it became obvious April didn’t believe his dreams of writing music for movies was equally important to her perfectly laid life plan. That’s why she’d told her dad to make Castiel a job offer and then urged her boyfriend to take it because “where else are you supposed to get a job in this town with your degree?”

The realization that he no longer had a say in his own life had made him feel more and more disillusioned. He hated the perspective of playing depressing music for people who couldn’t hear it and their mourning family, who had music as the last thing in their minds. He’d grown tired of the same unchangeable repertoire and of having his own work always falling on deaf ears. He wasn’t the wide-eyed college kid who thought his music could change the world, granted, but when he looked in the mirror, he couldn’t help but to wonder when exactly he had stopped trying. When exactly he’d begun doing exactly as April said to avoid the fights.

“I’m sorry, April,” he said after he took a long breath. “Maybe we just don’t want the same things anymore.”

“No, you’re just confused…”

“April, stop trying to tell me what _I_ want,” Castiel exploded. “I want to stay here, okay? I don’t want to go home, I don’t want to work for your dad, and I’m not even sure if I want to marry you. So stop. Please.”

The silence that came after his words seemed to last an eternity. Castiel braced himself.

“Well… I’m glad you got that off your chest!” April said, her voice seething with so much anger that even half a country away Castiel cringed. “You’re such a coward, you know? You couldn’t just tell me that to my face? Oh, no. You had to wait until you were miles away and break up with me _on the fucking phone_.”

Castiel’s mortification was only increased by the fact he could hear Naomi asking “What’s going on?” on the background.

“Maybe this is not the best time…”

“YOUR SON IS BREAKING UP WITH ME!” April yelled so loud Castiel had to hold the phone away from his ear. “Naomi, I can’t deal with him right now… you… you talk to him!”

Castiel still was treated to April’s crying for a couple of minutes until Naomi returned.

“Cas, what’s got into you?” Naomi asked, with the same irritated tone she’d use when Castiel got a bad grade at school or was caught trying to steal from the cookie jar. “April’s really shaken.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Castiel said, gritting his teeth. “This is between her and me…”

“Well, she can’t talk right now because she’s crying so much,” Naomi informed him. “I don’t understand, Castiel. I didn’t raise you to treat people like that, much less your girlfriend.”

“Mother…”

“I have to go,” Naomi said, with a tone so cold she could have frozen a desert. “We’ll talk when you’re a little more rational.”

And she hung up on him.

Castiel resisted the impulse to toss his cellphone across the room. Instead, he plopped down on the bed (which was so fluffy he sank in it) and grabbed a pillow to drown his screaming. He had heard from other guys that he was lucky his girlfriend and his mother got along so well because then he didn’t have to tread lightly between the two. Nobody had ever mentioned the possibility that they would someday team up to bully and shame him for his life choices.

And the thing that frustrated him the most was that they were supposed to be happy for him. Wasn’t that what family did?

And then the self-doubting began: what if they were right? What if he was risking too much by staying there? Just last night he had ended up sleeping in a cell, what if that happened again? It wasn’t like Roadhouse had offered him a secure job, just as long as Meg record lasted. And then what? What if he ran out of money again? What if he had to go back after all and April wouldn’t have him back and he ended up jobless and living with his mother and being a complete and utter failure of a human being…?

He stood up, paced around his room a couple of times and then pressed his forehead against the window. The view from up there was spectacular. All the lights shone so bright that the dark blue sky’s horizon appeared golden. The buildings rose high up against the faraway hills, and he could see the cars moving like ants around the roads.

Castiel breathed in and smiled. The city had so far brought him nothing but grief, but at least there he could suffer in his own terms.

 

* * *

 

Meg was sprawled out in her bed by the time the phone rang. She was already awake but refused to pick it up because she didn’t want to move more than it was strictly necessary. The window pane didn’t block out the radiant sun outside completely, so she pulled the covers over her head and tried to persuade herself that if she stayed quiet and still enough, Jo would forget about her and let her sleep for another hour.

That didn’t work, of course.

“Meg!” Jo called, bursting into her room. “Meg, you gotta wake up.”

“No,” Meg groaned, holding onto the covers tightly.

Jo grabbed them and snatched them away from her.

“You have to wake up,” she insisted. “We’d had a leak.”

That got Meg to open her eyes.

“What do you mean a leak?”

Jo lifted the window pane, and Meg dragged herself out of bed to look down. There was a swarm of paparazzi at the entry, pushing the religious nut-jobs who were holding signs that told her she was going to hell out of the way while the hotel staff hired specifically for that tried to form a human cordon to prevent the access.

“Oh, fuck no!” Meg moaned.

“Sam was barely able to get in,” Jo kept explaining. “He is in Castiel’s room with the contract and Dean is downstairs preparing the SUV so we can make a swift exit as soon as everything’s signed.”

“I hadn’t even had breakfast,” Meg complained.

“There will be breakfast,” Jo promised her, as she took out her cellphone again and started texting at the speed of light. “Hurry up, come on.”

Meg lazily put on a pair of jeans and the first shirt she found: a blue one that read “I AM FUCKING ANGRY” in very big white letters. She felt like it perfectly explained her mental state. If any of those fucking leeches came close enough for her to punch their cameras, she would not hesitate to do it. She’d done it before, and yes, the wimpy moron had sued her and the label had to pay him to go away, which had caused Meg more troubles than it was worth… but she didn’t regret one bit. She firmly believed paparazzi were the scum of the earth, and deserved every bit of aggression they got.

She grabbed her “I am famous” kit (the aviator glasses and the baseball cap) and slipped out of the room with her bag. Jo was waiting for her around the hall.

“Sam and Castiel are going through the last details,” she informed her as she opened the door.

Meg registered two things. First, the hobo she had hired as her songwriter on a whim was reading the pages Sam had passed him with a little frown between his eyebrows, like the task demanded every ounce of his concentration He didn’t look like a hobo now he was shaven and wearing a clean shirt. In fact, he seemed like an actual human being. Scratch that, he looked like a very attractive guy with big blue eyes and chapped lips.

Second, there were chocolate muffins.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said as she grabbed one and bit a big chunk out.

“Good morning, Meg,” Sam greeted her, wryly.

The youngest of the label’s lawyers had got his job because Dean, his older brother, had called in a few favors, and he spent most of his time doing this sort of menial legal tasks: redacting contracts and taking them wherever the musicians were so they could sign it. Meg knew he thought she was a diva, and it amused her to no end to prove him right.

“Heya, Sammy-boy,” she said, with her mouth full of muffin. “What you got for me?”

“Well, Mr. Novak… I mean, Cas, here, and I had already gone through most of the details,” Sam said, and Castiel smiled, like he was proud of the accomplishment of having Sam called him by his first name. “But if you want I can repeat them for you…”

“No need,” Meg said. She bit the muffin again and made sure to let a lot of crumbs fall all over Sam’s suit as she leaned in, slid a hand inside his jacket and nicked his fountain pen. “Where’s the stupid dotted line?”

“You know, if you keep signing things without reading them, one of these days you’re going to sell your soul and you won’t even realize it,” Jo said, frowning disapprovingly.

“Haven’t you heard the crowd outside?” Meg said, stuffing the rest of her muffin in her mouth. “I’ve already had.”

There was a chuckle, and it took her a second to realize it was Castiel who emitted it. He had been so intimidated the day before he had barely made a sound, like a scared little mouse afraid of being devoured by the cat if he took one wrong step. Now he was freshened up and seemed a little happier, and yes, his chuckle was kinda cute.

Meg shoved those thoughts to the back of her mind. Last time she’d found a guy cute, he had appeared all over the media two weeks later to let everyone know what an awful fuck she was. Not exactly what she needed right then.

“Okay, I think that’s all,” Sam said, gathering up all the papers spread through the table. “Welcome aboard, Cas. We hope you have a pleasant partnership with Roadhouse Records.”

“Awesome, we’re done,” Jo said, finally putting away her cellphone. “Let’s move before the hotel kicks us out for disturbing the other guests.”

Meg, Castiel and Sam followed her to the elevator and then into the subterranean parking lot, where the SUV waited with motor already running. Dean was trying to fend off a guy with a Nikon camera that somehow had got passed the hotel security.

“Last warning, buddy, move out!” Dean was saying, but the photographer was relentless.

“There she is!” he said, raising his camera and started to push the button in rapid succession. “Meg! Meg, a comment for Music Today! How do you feel about the album? Are you optimistic that it’ll be more successful than the previous one?”

Meg didn’t keep her promise to smash the guy’s camera, but she was quick to raise a middle finger in the air so the rest of his photos would be ruined. Jo, Cas and her slid in the backseat while Sam climbed in the passenger seat. The paparazzi tried to run to take a picture through the window, but Dean was already pressing the accelerator and bolting out of the parking lot.

“Hold on tight, guys,” he told them. “This is gonna get nasty.”

He wasn’t wrong: as soon as the vehicle bit the pavement, protestors and paparazzi’s alike threw themselves at the SUV, like a wave of zombies screaming questions and Bible quotes directed at Meg. There were three loud thumps in the back of the car and they all jumped before realizing they had been hit by eggs.

“This is insane,” Castiel said, with his eyes wide open.

Meg snorted at his naivety.

“This is Hollywood.”


	3. The Cavalry

The Silverbell Mansion was twenty minutes away, so of course, between the traffic and dropping Sam off at his firm, it took them about an hour to reach it. The state was walled and there was a security post at the entrance.

“Present your identifications, please,” said the dark-skinned man sitting in it.

“Gordon, you know who we are,” Dean complained.

“No exceptions, Winchester,” Gordon replied, coolly. “How’s your old man, by the way?”

“Good, good,” Dean said, as he passed everybody’s driver license to Gordon. “We should get together to have a drink sometime.”

Gordon took his time to examine all the ID’s before returning them to their owners.

“Welcome to Silverbell,” he said, as he pressed a button to open the gates. “Hope you have a pleasant stay.”

Dean made the SUV rolled down the path very slowly, which gave Castiel time to stare outside the window with his jaw hanging open. The garden was huge, with an emerald green lawn and several palm trees that hid the mansion from curious views. There was an Olympic swimming pool with deck chairs, a bar and a Jacuzzi around it, the crystalline water shining under the bright sun.

But the garden was nothing compared to the mansion itself. The carved wooden door and several windows formed arcades all over the beige stucco walls and were crowned by a red tile roof. On the highest point, there was a huge silver bell that gave the place its name.

“The place used to be a Spanish mission,” Jo told him. “Or was built to look like it was a Spanish mission, I’m not sure. It has a functional kitchen, a private record studio…”

“Jo,” Meg interrupted her, after blowing the smoke of her cigarette outside of the window. “I don’t care. No one cares.”

“This place is huge,” Castiel commented. “Who else is staying here?”

“Just the two of you,” Jo shrugged. “But if you want to invite other people over, that’s okay. Don’t forget to let Gordon know so he doesn’t bite their heads off. You have a twenty-four hours security at the gate. They’ll make sure to keep the paparazzi and the religious nutjobs away so you can write in peace. If you want to go out, you can always call Dean so he’ll drive you. Oh, and don’t worry about cleaning, we’ve already hired a team that’ll take care of that and your groceries shopping.”

“Look at the bright side,” Meg said when Castiel remained in dumb-founded silence after receiving that information. “It’s so big there’s no way we’ll be stepping on each other’s toes all the time.” She took off her aviator glasses and winked at Castiel. “Though I wouldn’t mind having my toes stepped on by you.”

Okay, this time he was pretty certain she was flirting.

“I… I have a… a girlfriend,” he stammered.

Well, that wasn’t quite true since last night. He was pretty sure April and him weren’t a thing anymore, but it hadn’t been very clear. And besides, Meg intimidated him.

“No one is saying you don’t, sweet cheeks,” she shrugged, and took another drag of her cigarette.

Dean finally stopped the truck at the entry and opened the doors for them. Meg didn’t even bother to thank him as she strutted inside. Castiel stayed behind to help Dean with the baggage.

“You lost,” Jo informed her. “She’s probably already claiming the biggest room.”

“I don’t really mind,” Castiel said, pretty certain even the second biggest room of that place was bigger than the apartment he had been living in since he arrived to California.

As soon as he stepped inside, he had to correct that thought. Even the hall was bigger than his former apartment. The room had tile floors that formed hypnotizing patrons and it was brightly lit by the sunshine coming in through the window. There were sculptures and paintings everywhere, probably to fill up all that space, along with a couch, a plasma screen TV and an enormous couch. Jo started pointing out doors and stairs and telling him where each led, but Castiel wasn’t paying attention. A single item placed next to a window had caught his eye.

It was a grand black piano, adorned with golden details and more expensive that his entire college tuition. He walked towards him like it was calling him and sat at the bench. His fingers almost trembled as he lifted the board and solemnly pressed a key. A single, pristine note vibrated in the air and Castiel smiled. He placed his hands over the keyboard, and started playing the intro to _Star-eyed Girl_ : the music resonated beautifully in the room and the piano’s sound was perfectly tuned. He could not have asked for more.

Jo waited until he was finished to say: “We’ll send someone to keep that thing tuned.”

“Anything else you’ll need?” Dean asked.

“Oh, I think we’re going to be just fine,” Meg answered from above their heads.

Castiel looked up to find her leaning on the stairs’ rail, smirking at him like she knew something he didn’t. He should have known then that he was in for a lot of trouble.

 

* * *

 

Life with Meg soon proved to be nothing short of chaotic. She kept the weirdest sleeping schedule, sometimes waking up at two in the afternoon and sometimes going to bed at the time Castiel woke up, around seven or eight in the morning, after spending all night doing God only knew what. He didn’t remember actually seeing her smoke, but he kept finding cigarette butts everywhere: on the carpet, on the coffee table, on the kitchen counter. Her eating habits were disgusting: the kitchen was always in disarray after she’d been through it and in one occasion, Castiel walked in on her spilling chocolate syrup inside a super-sized bag of chips.

“You’re not going to eat that, are you?” he asked, horrified at the idea.

“And why not?” she asked. “The media already declared I’m fat.”

“You’re not fat,” Castiel said, frowning.

“I’m Hollywood fat,” she replied with a shrug.

Then she grabbed one chocolate covered chip and chewed it with a moan of pleasure. Castiel had to leave the kitchen to avoid vomiting in the sink. Meg’s evil cackle echoed behind him, making him wonder if she’d just put that thing in her mouth only to make him sick.

She was always only partially dressed, with either long band shirts that barely covered her ass or yoga pants and bikinis tops that confirmed she was not, in the least, fat. Not that Castiel was looking. She’d lie on the living room’s couch or sprawled out over the floor or topless on the lounge chairs by the side of the pool to get tanned (also, not that Castiel looked, but her breasts were very small and her right nipple was pierced, which freaked him out).

Sometimes he could see her swimming in the pool from his window’s bedroom, and one time he saw her floating face down on the water. A surge of panic made him stand up and run to the garden calling her name. He was about to jump in the water, clothes and all when she moved, standing up and taking a deep breath.

“What?” she asked.

Castiel felt like the biggest idiot in the world, and she seemed to realize, because her laughter followed him as he dragged his feet back inside after muttering an embarrassed: “Nothing.”

All of that wasn’t completely surprising, though. Meg was, after all, a rockstar, and after only living in California for a few short months Castiel already knew that someone’s level of eccentricity was directly proportional to how famous they were. So he didn’t exactly expect her to keep a normal person’s habits.

What killed him was her complete and utter apathy towards anything relating to music.

“Okay, so I was thinking maybe we tweak the lyrics a little bit,” Castiel tried to say the first day after Meg resurrected around three in the afternoon. “I mean, I don’t really know how _Star-eyed Boy_ would sound, but…”

“Why?” she’d interrupted him.

“Well, ‘cause you’ll be singing it,” Castiel said. “And you’re…”

“What? A woman? You think a woman can’t sing about being in love with another woman?” Meg said. “What century do you live in?”

Castiel admitted she had a point.

“Well, I still think we should work on it,” he insisted. “Adjust it to your vocal range and…”

“The song’s fine,” she groaned. “Just write eleven more like it and we’re through.”

“I don’t think that’s how it… oh, my God, you’re not going to eat that, are you?”

Meg had just picked up an enormous jar of mayonnaise from the floor and had a spoon in her hand.

“What?” she asked, crooking an eyebrow. “Are you going to stop me?”

All Castiel could do was look in horror as she unscrew the lid.

“Please, don’t,” he said. Meg sank the spoon in the yellow substance, all the time keeping eye contact with him. “I’m begging you, don’t.”

Meg put the entire spoon in her mouth.

Castiel jumped off the bench.

“I’m gonna… I’ll have to… I’m gonna go for a walk.”

“Ah, come on!” Meg shouted as he fled for the door. “Live a little!”

That happened every time he tried to talk to her about the songs. Every. Single. Time. She either ate something that made him heave or belched loud enough to drown his words or yawn in his face before walking away saying she was going to take a nap (which usually meant Castiel wouldn’t be seeing any more of her until the following day).

And that was when she wasn’t straight up harassing him.

Castiel lost count of the times he found whoopee cushions on the piano bench or the chair he was about to sit (he also fell for it more times that he was ready to admit). Other times, his music sheets or his computer would disappear only for him to found them in the most unusual places: on top of the fridge, or crumpled and stuffed inside the empty cookie jar, or hidden between his mattress and his bed. Which meant Meg had access to his bedroom and the idea sent shivers down his spine, so he started locking the door whenever she was out of his sight.

The line was crossed, in Castiel’s mind, the day he was having a long, refreshing shower and suddenly the water started coming out burning hot. He screamed at the top of his lungs, stumbled and hit the ground naked while trying to get out. He suffered what he was convinced were at least second degree burns trying to close the water.

He walked down the stairs with a towel wrapped around his waist, with his hair dripping wet and foam in very uncomfortable places.

“Well, look at you,” Meg joked from the couch, where she was reading a magazine. “You look great. I heard pink is this season’s new black.”

“Something’s wrong with the heater,” Castiel announced, holding onto his towel with a tighter grip, because he didn’t know how, but he had the feeling Meg would find some way to snatch it away from him and make a comment about his penis.

“Nothing’s wrong with the heater,” Meg said, turning her attention back to the magazine. “I turned it up because I thought you were taking too long.”

“You did what?”

“We have to regulate the water, Castiel,” she said, with a concerned expression. “There might be another drought this summer, have you considered that?”

“Meg, for the love of God,” Castiel said, feeling like he was at the edge of tears. “I wasn’t finished yet! I got soap all over my…”

His voice trailed off. Meg’s eyes wandered down to his waist and then back up at his face.

“Well, you can always take a dive in the pool,” she told him, with a smirk. “Don’t mind me. I won’t look.”

Castiel felt like throwing something against the wall, but he was clutching the towel with both hands so that was out of the question. Cursing internally, he went out (he hoped like hell Gordon was looking away at that moment) and jumped in the water to finish washing himself, half wishing to drown.

Later that evening, he called Jo.

“Hey, Cas, what’s up?” she greeted him. “I was just thinking about checking up on you two…”

“Jo, I quit,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line and then a long, deep sigh.

“Well, that was fast,” Jo commented, like she wasn’t expecting any different. “It hasn’t even been two weeks.”

“I can’t do it,” Castiel kept complaining. “She keeps hiding my things, and today she turned the heater up and…”

“Okay, Cas, listen, I know Meg can be a little difficult to deal with,” Jo said. “But you can’t throw it all away just because she’s getting on your nerves. How’s the writing process going?”

“We haven’t written a thing,” Castiel confessed.

“Nada?”

“Not a single note.”

“Right, _that’s_ bad,” Jo said, like Castiel misery was secondary to business matters. “Don’t quit just yet, okay? I’m sending in the cavalry.”

“Who’s the cavalry?” Castiel asked, but Jo had already hung up.

Not twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. Meg had already disappeared inside her room, so Castiel had no more remedy than get up from the piano and open.

“Hello, you must be Castiel,” said the muscular guy standing at the other side.

“Uh… we haven’t ordered any pizza?” Castiel said, squinting at him in confusion.

“No, but I need a bait to convince Meg to come down,” the man said, smiling. “Mind if I come in?”

Castiel hesitated another moment, but if Gordon or whoever was on duty that night had let him through, then he must have been clear. He stepped aside and the man handed him the pizza to take off his hat and his jacket, which were absolutely not necessary in a spring night in California.

“I’m Benny,” he introduced himself, offering him a hand. “I’m the cavalry. I’m here to make sure Meg stops tormenting you.”

“Oh, thank God,” Castiel said, suddenly looking at Benny like he was a bearded angel descended from Heaven to answer his most desperate prayers. “She’s been driving me crazy, she…”

“Calm down, brother,” Benny said, putting a giant hand on Castiel’s shoulder. “You need to understand one thing about Meg: she is a very particular person.”

“Because she’s a rockstar?”

“No, because she is a mean person who enjoys petty pranks,” Benny said, gently nudging Castiel towards the dining room with him. “But you just gotta know how to get through to her. Sometimes that means stooping down to her level, but sometimes you just need to have a little chat. I’m gonna bring her down now, and that’s what we’re all going to do, alright?”

Despite his appearance, Benny’s speech was very calming and Castiel had no doubt in his mind he could handle the situation.

“Help yourself to some pizza,” Benny invited him. “This might take a little bit.”

Castiel open the carton and had just taken a bite when the screaming and the shouting began. He didn’t quite catch what they were saying, but Meg seemed to be insulting all of Benny’s relatives in a most colorful language, and Benny was responding in the same manner. It went on for a couple of minutes, and then the most absolute silence befell on the mansion. Castiel was about to get up and go check if somebody had been murdered, but the dining room’s opened. In marched Meg, stomping her feet on the ground like a recently scolded five-year-old, followed by Benny, with the same calmed manners that he’d had when he’s arrived.

“Meg,” he said. “Is there something you want to tell Castiel?”

Meg crossed her arms and looked away.

“Meg?” Benny insisted.

“Sorry I made fun of you,” Meg replied, reluctantly and looking at the ground. “And I promise to be a better partner in the future.”

“Oh,” Castiel was taken aback. He definitely did not see that apology coming. “That’s okay. But please, don’t do the heater thing again.”

Meg started smiling at the memory but desisted under Benny’s severe stare.

“Great,” Benny said. “Now that that is solved, can you leave us alone for a minute, Castiel? Take as much pizza as you want.”

“Thank you,” Castiel said, putting another slice in his plate. “I’m just gonna… yeah.”

He got out of the dining room and stood by the door. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop, he really didn’t, but Benny’s voice carried and he couldn’t help it.

“Are you okay?” Benny asked her. “Are you having troubles?”

“I’m clean if that’s what you’re asking,” Meg groaned.

“I didn’t mean that,” Benny said, not at all altered by Meg’s antagonizing. “I asked if you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” Meg snapped. “I’m writing a new album, I’m living in this borrowed super-awesome mansion, things could not be better. What you want me to tell you?”

There was a pause, and then Benny said:

“Give me your hand. We’re gonna say the prayer.”

“I don’t wanna say the stupid prayer.”

“Meg,” Benny pressed her. There was another silence, in which Castiel imagined Meg sighing exasperatedly before grabbing Benny’s hand. “You start.”

“God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, yadda, yadda…”

Castiel left at that point, feeling guilty for having listened to that. It obviously was a very private moment, and he was blatantly intruding. He climbed the stairs to his room and left the pizza on the night stand. He grabbed his laptop and tapped his fingers on the keyboard for a moment. Then he typed Meg’s name in the search engine.

She had her own Wikipedia entry. That was so surreal.

The picture of her showed her in the middle of a concert, holding her guitar over her head like she was about to smash it. The article explained Meg had been born in New York and dropped out of community college to join Satan’s Brides at age nineteen. She had been with the band all through their first three albums and meteoric and controversial rise to fame. The band’s lyrics usually dealt with overtly religious themes, and the frontman had legally changed his name to “Lucifer”, so of course they had attracted the attention of several Christian groups who strongly objected to their songs. Which explained the people protesting outside Meg’s hotel and the eggs thrown at the SUV.

During the summer of 2011, after a concert in Cincinnati, Meg had suffered an overdose and had to be rushed to the hospital. As a consequence, the band had continued their tour without her while she recovered in a rehab clinic. Eventually her separation from them became permanent, but she was almost immediately picked up by Roadhouse Records. Her first solo album had been a flop, however, and more recently she had been at the center of a new scandal: several nudes of her had been leaked, and that had been promptly followed by a break-up with her TV-actor boyfriend, Bartholomew Harrington.

The entry finished with a note stating that Meg had begun the writing process of her new album and she expected it to release it sometime later that year.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Castiel muttered as he took a bite of pizza.

But still, he felt like he understood Meg much better now. In the past ten years, she had been through much more than most people go through during their entire lives. It was no wonder she was so cynic and jaded.

There was a knock on the door and Castiel hastily closed his laptop.

“Come in,” he said.

Benny opened the door and took a step inside.

“How’s the pizza?”

“It’s good, yes,” Castiel said. “Thank you for bringing it. And thank you for talking to Meg.”

“It’s no big deal,” Benny shrugged. “I thought I would offer you my number in case she gets restless again.”

“That’s kind of strange,” Castiel said, tilting his head. “Like if she’s a child and she misbehaves, I’m supposed to tell on her to you?”

“Not at all, man,” Benny said. “It’s just sometimes she doesn’t realize when she needs someone to talk to, so I count on Jo to call me if Meg starts acting out. But I figured, since you’re sharing a living space with her you would notice a lot earlier.”

“Yes,” Castiel said, mortified for having thought of Meg in such a patronizing way. “Of course, I understand.”

After they exchanged phone numbers, Benny touched his hat as a goodbye gesture and left. Castiel still took his time to finish his pizza before walking downstairs.

Meg was sitting on the couch in a lotus position. There was a movie playing in the TV, but although she had her eyes fixed on it, it was obvious she wasn’t paying any attention to it. Castiel took one step and Meg raised her head and glared in his direction.

“So,” she asked. “Whose wonderful idea it was to call my sponsor on me?”

“Uh…” Castiel stuttered, taking aback. Meg was smiling, but it looked more like she was baring her teeth and getting ready to rip off Castiel’s intestines.

“It doesn’t matter,” she groaned. “This isn’t happening.”

“W-What’s not happening?”

“The fucking album,” she replied. “I thought I could do it for Jo’s sake, you know, to make up for the embarrassment I put her through last time. But I just can’t. I don’t have it in me.”

Castiel felt a surge of anger in his gut.

“You haven’t even _tried_ to write something,” he pointed out.

“Well, I don’t have to,” Meg groaned, standing up and taking a step towards Castiel. “That’s why you’re here. You wanna know why I chose your song? Because it was the most generic, soulless love song ever. I’m horrified at the very idea of having to sing that shit, but the teenage girls who still think I’m somewhat relevant will pay _money_ for it. So no, I don’t have to write a damn thing. I just gotta _sell it_.”

Castiel’s blood was boiling by this point. How dared she? How dared she judge his song?

“At least I’ve done something other than bullying someone else for my amusement,” Castiel replied. “If you had been mildly nice, maybe Jo wouldn’t have called your sponsor on you.”

“New flash, sweet cheeks: I am not nice,” Meg rolled her eyes. “Pack your bags. You’re heading home tomorrow.”

She turned around. But Castiel hadn’t said his last words yet.

“If you think it’s going to be so easy to get rid of me, you’re thoroughly mistaken,” he spat. “You might be a quitter, but I am not.”

“Put it in a song with a catchy tune, pal,” Meg replied, already halfway upstairs. “Maybe then you’ll find someone who listens.”

Castiel resisted the urge to throw his plate at the wall. Instead, he took it to the sink and scrubbed it with much more energy than it was necessary, like the mature adult he was.

“Generic and soulless,” he muttered to himself. “How would she know?”

He put it out to dry, and then he opened the fridge to get some iced tea, because he didn’t think he could sleep that night without some form of calming drink.

Meg’s jar of mayonnaise was there, sitting right in front of the tea. Castiel took it out, decided to throw it away because he couldn’t for the life of him bear the idea of watching Meg take another spoonful. He couldn’t understand what in the world would compel a person to eat mayonnaise like that. But now that he took a good look at it, he realized the jar didn’t have any labels on it. Maybe it was some sort of special mayonnaise?

A part of him told him it was ridiculous for him to try and understand why Meg did anything she did. She was just in an entire different level, so why even bother?

He still opened the lid and sank his pinky finger in it. The yellow substance in it felt way too thick to be mayonnaise, so what…?

Vanilla pudding. It was vanilla pudding. It had been vanilla pudding the entire time. He was certain that if he were to try the chocolate syrup he would find out it was barbecue sauce or something like that.

Admittedly, as a prank, it was a fairly innocent one, but in his current state of mind, he felt exasperated.

“Very well,” he muttered to himself. “Two can play this game.”


	4. Counterattack

Meg was awaked at an ungodly hour by a single sharp piano note drilling into her skull. In fact, she sat on her bed so abruptly that she lost her balance and ended up on the floor, with the sheets tangled around her legs and her hair getting in her eyes.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she muttered after looking at her cellphone and finding out it wasn’t even six o’clock in the morning. Last night she had stayed up dicking around on the Internet until two, which meant she’d only had four hours of sleep. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until she’d shut up whoever was making that noise. She grabbed some panties and a shirt on her way to the door, ready to verbally smack the jerk that woke her up.

It was Castiel, of course. He’d somehow got a hold of two massive speakers that he’d connected to the grand piano and now was calmly and relentlessly playing the first notes of _Star-eyed Girl._ How he managed to do that while also wearing a pair of noise cancelling headphones was beyond Meg’s understanding. He must have known his own stupid song better than she thought.

“Hey!” she shouted, but of course, with both the loud music and the headphones, there was no way he could  hear her. So she walked to him, grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him a little. “Hey!”

“Oh, good morning, Meg,” he greeted her with a smile, like she hadn’t all but fired him the night before. “I found this in the recording room in the basement. Can you believe what a great acoustics this place has?”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Meg asked, not at all impressed by Castiel’s display of innocence.

“Well, since you’ve made it very clear that you have no intentions whatsoever to participate in the creative process,” he said, and he somehow made it sound like Meg had lit a house full of puppies on fire. “I thought I might as well go ahead and start on my own.”

“Oh, that’s very funny,” Meg groaned. “But I told you, this project is cancelled.”

“Well, I know what _you_ said,” Castiel said. “But I’ve been re-reading my contract and it turns out you don’t have the authority to fire me.”

Meg was pretty sure it was her lack of sleep playing a trick on her, but for a moment it sounded like Castiel was sassing her.

“What?” she asked.

Castiel was ready for that question: he handed her a copy of the contract with several highlighted parts in a yellow so bright it hurt Meg’s sensitive eyes.

“It’s on page number four,” he informed her. “Technically, I work for Roadhouse Records, not for you, even though I’m working with you in this particular instance. The only way that you’d get rid of me is if Jo or some other higher up fires me. And until you’ve informed Jo of your intentions of quitting, I am still your hired songwriter.”

The small letters looked like ants that wouldn’t stay still, so Meg had to trust that Castiel was telling the truth. That’s what she got for signing without reading.

“So that’s what I’m doing,” Castiel concluded, with a big, polite smile that looked perfectly designed to irritate her. “I’m songwriting up until the moment someone from the label tells me I stop doing so.”

“Oh, you think you’re so smart,” Meg groaned. “You think you’ve got this all figured out, don’t you?”

Castiel shrugged, still smiling, which probably meant that yes; that was exactly what he thought.

“I’m gonna call Jo right now,” Meg informed her. “And I’m going to put an end to this.”

“You’re in your right,” Castiel replied, calmly.

Meg had to go upstairs to find her cellphone and then back down because she wanted Castiel to hear exactly what she was going to say.

Jo’s phone rang twice before she answered.

“Harvelle,” she said, in between pants. Meg imagined she had caught her in the middle of her morning exercise. She had crashed with Jo a couple of times, and she knew she kept a running mill in front of her living room’s window, so she could look at the city’s skyline while she tortured her body into healthiness.

“Hey, Jo,” Meg started. “Look, I have something important to tell you…”

Before she could say another word, Castiel started playing again. The deafening music drowned out Meg’s voice, but not Jo’s delighted squeal.

“That’s a new song!” she exclaimed.

It took Meg another second and an exasperated look in Castiel’s direction, but Jo was right. That wasn’t _Star-eyed Girl_ , but a faster paced, much more animated melody.

“Yeah, whatever,” Meg said, as soon as Castiel stopped playing and she could speak again. “Listen…”

Castiel played it again, and Jo clapped at the other end.

“You’re writing! That’s _awesome_!” she shouted. “So I guess talking to Benny cheered you up, huh?”

Meg winced. “Oh, yeah… but Jo…”

“I am very proud of you,” Jo interrupted her. “And that song sounds great. I can’t wait to hear you play it on your guitar.”

“Jo…”

“Maybe you were right and Castiel is exactly what you needed. Creatively speaking,” she clarified. “Anyway, I gotta go. But I’m so glad! Say hi to Cas for me!”

“Since when…?” Meg began asking, but Jo had already hung up. “Since when is he _Cas_?”

Castiel was observing her with such a smug smile on his face that Meg had an impulse to wipe it out with a punch.

“You ambushed me!” she accused him.

“You harassed me for days on end,” Castiel replied, standing up and walking towards Meg until he was so close she could see the angry sparks in his blue eyes. “It’s payback time.”

Meg was left open-mouthed at such insolence, but at the very least she had to recognize the guy had guts. Most of the people who had been targets of Meg’s relentless pranking and mood swings (roadies, beauticians, assistants of all kinds) had ended up quitting out of frustration. The only two exceptions so far had been Jo and Benny, and if Castiel wanted to try and join that list, well… she wasn’t going to disappoint him.

“Oh, you think you’re so tough, don’t you?” she asked, squinting her eyes at him. “Bring it on.”

“I will,” Castiel replied. Then the polite smile he had before reappeared like they hadn’t just declared war to each other. “So what do you think about the new tune? I still hadn’t come up with lyrics to go with it. Any suggestions?”

“I’m going back to bed,” Meg announced.

“You do that,” Castiel replied. Meg hadn’t even put a toe on the first step when he started playing again, and for some reason, it sounded even louder than before to Meg.

She slammed the door of her room and put a pillow over her head. It was useless, of course.

 

* * *

 

It soon became clear that Castiel was the most stubborn person Meg had ever met, after herself, of course. Every morning at six o’clock he started playing on the piano and he kept going until well into the afternoon. Meg had no chance of sleeping in anymore, and if she wanted to watch a movie or play videogames, she had to wait until Castiel took his lunch break, because he kept the living room monopolized until then.

And it turned out Castiel not only planned to mess with her sleeping schedule, he was also all over her dietary habits lately.

“Where’s all my food?” Meg had screamed scandalized one day upon discovering all the bags of chips and chocolate bars were gone.

“I threw it away,” Castiel replied, as he calmly sipped from a cup of tea.

“You did _what_?” Meg had heard him, but she was giving him the chance to take it back because she didn’t think she had the strength to strangle him and bury his body in the backyard.

“Junk food has no nutritional value, and it affects the way your brain works,” Castiel answered, matter-of-factly. “It also affects your energy, which is maybe why you sleep so much.”

“Why do you care how much I sleep or what I eat?” Meg replied, about to try and rip out his head with her bare hands.

“I’m just trying to help improve your lifestyle,” Castiel said, raising his hands in the air innocently. “I will make dinner later and of course you can join me, but if you’re really that hungry now, you can always eat some apples.”

“Apples?” Meg repeated, like Castiel had started talking in an unintelligible language.

“Apples,” Castiel repeated. “I trust you do know what those are, don’t you?”

Meg growled in frustration and left the kitchen to plan her revenge, but an hour later she was so hungry and the steak Castiel was cooking smelled so good she couldn’t help but to come down again. Castiel had served a plate and a set of cutlery for her.

“Ah, Meg,” he smiled when he saw her. “I’m glad you decided to join me.”

Meg grabbed the plate, the fork and the knife and left the dining room without saying a word.

“Or you can eat in your room, if you prefer it,” Castiel shouted after her. “But don’t forget to bring the plate back down!”

Meg forgot to bring the plate back down and the following morning it was full of ants. She squashed them with her thumb, imagining Castiel’s face on every one of them.

The man was decided to force a healthy lifestyle on her, and when she complained to Jo about it, she said it wouldn’t hurt her.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘ _killed with kindness’_?” Meg said, knowing full well she was grasping at straws.

“I don’t think that applies in this case, Meg,” Jo replied. “You do have eating habits that would give anybody a heart attack at age forty.”

“Why is anybody’s business what I put in my body?!” Meg screamed.

“How’s the writing process going?” Jo asked, ignoring Meg’s anger.

Meg wanted to say it was a disaster and that she was quitting music forever, but that would have been a lie Jo could easily disprove by calling Castiel. And besides, Meg didn’t think she could deliver it convincingly. Castiel played so loud that she had no other option but to hear him. She would eat her own tongue before admitting it, but some of the melodies he produced actually had a nice ring to them.

She still firmly refused to work with him. Sometimes, she had caught herself scribbling down words in her notebooks that had the potential to be lyrics. She ended up striking them out or ripping the pages and throwing them away more often than not, because there was no way in hell she was going to admit Castiel actually inspired her to try and create something.

She remembered how easy it had been to come up with songs and rhymes when she worked with Satan’s Brides. It was little known fact about the band that, despite everyone believing that Lucifer was the major creative force, Meg had been the lyricist during her run with them. They came up with the sound first, and then Meg was always able to find the words to go with them. Their album-writing process always went smoothly, or maybe Meg remembered it that way because she had been high during most of that time.

That was another problem: the feeling that she hadn’t written anything decent since she’d got clean. Benny said that it was normal, that it took some time to learn to function without the crutch of the drugs. He never mentioned anything about feeling like a failure in the meantime. So she paced around her room, trying in vain to find her focus, smoking a cigarette after the other until the air stank of nicotine.

She missed the band. She wondered who wrote the lyrics for them now. Not that redheaded firecracker they had replaced her with, she guessed. The theatricality and try-hardery of that woman made her sick. First time she’d seen her (on a cover of _Rolling Stones_ announcing the release of their new album), she had to admit she was at least an impressive presence: she was wearing a leather jacket over a t-shirt that said: “The devil made me do it”, with her lipstick as red as her hair. “Meet Abaddon, Meg Master’s replacement!” screamed the magazine in big bold letters. It had been like getting stabbed in the gut.

“Who the hell calls herself _Abaddon_?” she had called Jo, indignant. “How pretentious can she be?”

“Don’t they have like, two other members called _Lucifer_ and _Lilith_?”

“Yeah, but Lilith is Lilith’s actual name,” Meg had protested.

“Okay, you know what?” Jo had yawned in her ear because it was two in the morning and Meg had interrupted her sleep. “I don’t think you should be reading these things, Meg.”

Meg had to agree. She hadn’t heard her former band’s new album or watched any of their new videos. It was too painful.

She also hadn’t been able to overcome all the shit critics said about her album, all the one-star reviews and awful comments about how she was trying to profit from her former glory, how she sounded “canned” and “boring” and “going through the motions”. Some of them were actually very creative to let people know just how bad she was. One of them had written her voice was as grating as dragging nails on a chalkboard. There also had been some comments about the size of her thighs and how it’d increased since leaving the clininc. Meg still didn’t understand what that had to do with her music.

She had resisted the impulse to make a collage with all those critics under Benny’s advice, whose motto was to just let the negativity wash over oneself and focus on the positive.

The problem was Meg didn’t think she had anything positive to focus on.

 

* * *

 

For once, Castiel had gone quiet early that evening. Meg imagined he had other things to do, like call his girlfriend or something, and decided her time had come. She grabbed the peanut butter she had rescued from the kitchen and tiptoed downstairs, wondering where would be the perfect place to put some. She didn’t want to ruin the piano, but maybe if she extended a layer on the bench Castiel would have an ugly stain on his trousers to deal with…

She had just taken the lid off the jar when the doorbell rang. She froze for a moment, confused, and she completely lost her window of opportunity. Castiel emerged from the dining room and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Were you about to desecrate the piano?” he asked, squinting at her.

“No,” Meg said, even though the spoon in her hand was clearly hovering over the bench. “I was having a snack before you throw this one away too,” she lied, and put the entire spoon in her mouth.

Castiel stared at her with skepticism until the doorbell rang again.

“Who’s that?”

“I’m guessing the sushi,” Castiel explained.

“You ordered sushi?” Meg asked, surprised. Castiel was such a small town boy she doubted he even knew what sushi was. On the other hand, she half expected him to start a speech about food poisoning and other unpleasant things one could get from eating raw fish.

“I was reliably informed you enjoyed that kind of food,” he said, with a shrug.

“By whom?” Meg asked, a little bit disturbed at the idea Castiel had been talking to someone about her behind her back. She was even more disturbed when he opened the door and Charlie stalked in carrying two enormous bags.

“Hi!” she greeted Castiel with a quick hug. “So glad you called! Merlin’s beard, look at this place,” she added, with eyes wide open as she took in the impressive living room. Then her eyes grew even wider (if that was even possible) when they met Meg. “Hi!” she added, with an acute pitch in her voice.

“Hey… Charlie,” Meg said.

“Oh, you remembered my name!” Charlie said, with her face lighting up.

“We should take that to the kitchen,” Castiel indicated, pointing at the bags.

“Yes, of course,” Charlie said. “I hope I brought enough for everybody.”

“Wait a second,” Meg asked, as the other two were already disappearing inside the house. “Who’s _everybody_?”

She got her answer not a second later when Jo, Dean and Sam walked in through the still opened door.

“Knock, knock,” Jo called, with a smile. She was wearing jeans and a red shirt, and it was very weird to see her like that instead of her tailored suits. “Are we late for the sushi?”

“What?” Meg asked.

“Yeah, I’m not a great fan of raw fish, but Cas said it would be fun,” Dean commented.

“Nice to see you, Meg,” Sam added, and the three of them disappeared inside the living room before Meg could come up with a proper protest.

The doorbell rang once again, and this time Meg was slightly relieved to see the person standing on the other side.

“Benny, I’m being invaded,” she complained to her sponsor.

“Well, hello to you too,” her sponsor said, rolling his eyes. “I brought beer,” he added, lifting the pack for Meg to see.

“What? We’re junkies,” Meg reminded him. “We don’t drink.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of non-alcoholic beverages,” Benny shrugged. “All of the flavor, none of the addiction.”

“Ah, Benny,” Castiel called, with a smile as he went from the kitchen to the dining room with a plate full of sushi. “So glad you could make it.”

“Brotha’,” Benny greeted him with a touch of his hat. “What?” he added to Meg’s horrified face.

“ _Et tu, Brute?_ ”

“Don’t be so dramatic, sista’,” Benny laughed, putting an arm around her shoulder and gently pushed her towards the dining room. “Castiel just thought you could use a little bit of social interaction. He’s very considerate.”

“A vindictive dick’s more like it,” Meg complained.

“I’m tempted to say you brought this on yourself, but I get the feeling you’ll punch me if I do,” Benny commented.

Meg still threw a punch at his arm, that Benny dodged laughing and went inside the dining room. Meg followed him because she still wasn’t done talking to him, not realizing she was walking straight into the trap.

“Hey, Meg!” Charlie was the first to notice her. “I saved you a seat right here next to me.”

“You gotta try this sushi,” Jo said, with a mouth full. “I didn’t know this thing existed. It’s glorious.”

Benny grabbed Meg’s arm and dragged her to the chair Charlie had saved. And then it was too late to escape.

“Isn’t this nice?” Castiel asked, with a smug smile on his face. “I haven’t made many friends since I got here to L. A., so I’m really happy we could gather together. We should definitely do it more often.”

Meg promised herself she was shaving his eyebrows while he slept.

 

* * *

 

Meg was in such a bad mood for the rest of the night that it was amazing that a literal dark cloud made of all her anger didn’t form above her head and started raining. Everybody laughed and joked and was being so charming and friendly she wanted to stick the chopsticks in her eyes. She kept putting rolls of sushi in her mouth (which, granted, were as delicious as Jo had said) in order to avoid talking, but even that was hard to do when she was sitting next to a literal ray of sunshine who insisted in trying to befriend her.

“… and you are so much better than Abaddon,” Charlie said at one point.

“Really?” Meg had promised herself she wanted to know nothing about her, but the fact that Charlie, who seemed to be kindness incarnated, was willing to trash-talk her caught her attention. “How come?”

“She can’t play any of your riffs,” Charlie said. “It’s like her fingers are going to fall if she tries, it’s really sad. Some people like her because she’s so over-the-top, but musically speaking…”

Charlie put her tongue between her lips and emitted a farting sound. Surprisingly, that made Meg feel a lot better.

“And what can you tell me about their last album?”

“It’s all over the place,” Charlie complained. “Sounds like they couldn’t agree on a topic or a style, so you got the typical songs of blood orgies and such, and then you got a love ballad? I don’t even know what they were trying to accomplish there. Lucifer says in the interviews that everything went smoothly, but hearing the album…”

“Rule number one, you can never let people know how bad things are inside the band,” Meg said, taking a swig of her fake beer. “It makes you look weak. So of course he would say that.”

“Really?” Charlie’s eyes opened wide. She put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin against her hand, looking at Meg with fascination. “What else can you tell me?”

“Well…” Meg removed her memories from her days at the band trying to find some juicy dirty little secret about her former band mates. “Lucifer did a lot of playback. Sometimes he did really have a good excuse, like maybe we’ve had a series of concerts and he wanted to rest his voice. But sometimes he just didn’t feel like singing, you know?”

“I knew it!” Charlie exclaimed slamming her fist against the table. Everybody stared at her in confusion, but Charlie was too triumphant to care.

“So guys,” Jo intervened. “How’s the songwriting process going? How many songs do you have finished?”

Meg opened her mouth, and upon realizing she really didn’t have anything to say about that, she closed it again.

“We have a couple,” Castiel said, quickly.

“We do?” Meg asked.

“You do? That’s great!” Jo said. “Do you think maybe we could hear a little?”

“Oh, yes, can we?” Charlie asked, clapping her hands with enthusiasm.

“I… you know, I don’t want to jinx it…” Meg mumbled pathetically.

“Come on, sista’, don’t be superstitious,” Benny chimed in. “I haven’t heard that pretty voice of yours in a while.”

That was probably because Meg hadn’t actually sung in a while outside of the shower. The eyebrow shaving Castiel was earning had just been upgraded to more heater manipulations whenever he was showering. Unaware that Meg was mentally planning all sort of bloody revenges against him, Castiel was grinning in her direction.

“Please, Meg,” he insisted. “You know how you told me you were so proud of our work and you couldn’t wait for people to hear it?”

Dean almost choked on a roll.

“Why you kicked me?” he asked, with a mouth disgustingly full.

“I didn’t kick you,” Meg replied, not even looking at him.

“Yes, you did!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meg said. She had actually been trying to kick Castiel, but frustration didn’t help her aiming.

“So can we hear it?” Charlie asked. “Just one song? Please! Pretty, pretty please!”

Meg wanted to keep refusing, but the fact that someone wasn’t worshipping Abaddon like she was the last Coke in the dessert help her make up her mind.

“One song,” she agreed.

Castiel’s smug smile was the most irritating thing ever.

 

* * *

 

As their guests settled around the piano, Meg felt like she was back at high school about to bullshit her way through a presentation she hadn’t really studied for. She opened her mouth a couple of times, like a fish out of the water, ready to confess to Jo that she hadn’t actually been participating in Castiel’s writing sessions, but then he forced a music sheet in her hand.

“It doesn’t really have a name yet,” he said, before sitting in the same bench she hadn’t had time to desecrate just a couple of hours before. “Maybe you can help us come up with some. Okay, uh, from the top…”

He cracked his knuckles and started playing a rhythmic tune that, Meg understood immediately, had clearly been conceived to be play with a guitar. She caught the notes in the sheet right in time for her to sing the first lines:

_I hope you choke on your words_

_And all the fire you spit_

_I hope it scorches your tongue_

_And you get lost in your lies…_

“That doesn’t rhyme,” Meg interrupted the song.

Castiel stopped playing abruptly.

“I’m sorry what?”

“It doesn’t rhyme,” Meg repeated. “Somebody pass me a pen.”

Of course, it was Charlie who scrambled to her feet and gave her one. Meg leaned over the music rack, completely ignoring the fact that the side of her boob was practically shoved in Castiel’s face and crossed out the line to scribble something on top.

“There,” she said.

“That… that does sound better,” Castiel admitted.

“Okay, again,” Meg determined, straightening up.

_… I hope it scorches your tongue_

_And burn away your lying lips_

_All the times you said you’d walk away_

_But you’re still standing there in my way…_

“Wait, that doesn’t work,” Meg interrupted the song again. Castiel’s fingers sank abruptly on whatever key they were leaning, producing a discordant noise that made everybody gasp and cover their ears.

“By all means,” Castiel said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “What part of it doesn’t convince you?”

“This second verse should be the first,” Meg explained, making more marks and drawing some arrows to indicate the change. “Or at least the bridge that leads into the chorus.”

“But that is the chorus,” Castiel argued.

“That can’t be the chorus, it’s too elaborated,” Meg replied, starting to lose the very little patience she had. “A chorus should have shorter lines, should be easy to remember. Nobody is going to sing this monstrosity back at me at a concert.”

“Of course they would!” Castiel said, turning around. “Charlie, would you sing this back?”

“Uh… I don’t want to be part of this, you guys,” said Charlie, intimidated by the intensity of the argument.

“Dean…”

“Don’t ask him, he doesn’t know any music this side of the eighties,” Meg said.

“Hey!” Dean protested, but both Jo and Sam burst out laughing out loud, as did Benny. Charlie wasn’t sure what was so funny, except for the fact that Meg and Castiel kept arguing even though it was obvious everybody had lost interest in the song.

“This is a disaster, how did you even come up with these lyrics?”

“Stop changing things!” Castiel said, trying to snatch the music sheets from Meg’s hands.

“I’m the one who is going to make a fool of herself singing this,” she replied, holding them out of his reach. “So I’m changing whatever the hell I want.”

“At least let me see what you’re doing.”

“Forget it,” Meg said, starting to run around the piano.

“You’re being childish!” Castiel complained, but he still ran behind her, trying to block her path.

“You’re being annoying!”

“Don’t climb on top of the piano, you’re gonna get dirt on it…!”

Benny fell of his chair, hugging his sides from how hard he was laughing. Everyone was cracking up by now. At some point, Sam began clapping as clumsily as a seal with brain damage, and soon the rest joined him. Meg and Castiel were so stunned by this development that they actually stopped fighting to stare at the five human beings gasping for air and applauding them. The two musicians exchanged a confused look, and then Castiel offered his hand so Meg could get down. Together they took a bow and pretended everything that just happened was exactly what they’d planned.

 

* * *

 

Later, when the dinner plates were properly washed (“Leave them for the cleaning crew,” Meg had protested. “I’m not having ants crawling all over the place,” Castiel had replied) and everybody was too full and too happy to do anything but go home, Jo told Meg that if they failed as musicians, they could always try and get their own sitcom.

“Seriously,” she said. “If your writing sessions are always like this, there’s no wonder you haven’t got much work done. But at least you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Yeah, sure,” Meg muttered, hoping her sarcasm and disbelief didn’t show in her tone.

“Keep it up, Meg,” Jo said, hugging her goodbye. “I’ve got a good feeling about you two as a team.”

Meg didn’t want to inquire about the exact nature of her feelings.

Benny was the last to leave, with a tight bear hug and a “ _Take care of yourself, sista’_ ”. Meg went back inside to find Castiel sitting at the piano again. She walked up to him to find out he was squinting at the music sheets, trying to decipher Meg’s tiny handwriting and all her blots and arrows. Meg dragged a chair to sit next to him.

“Okay,” she said. “I think we need to come to an agreement.”

Castiel blinked at her, almost as he hadn’t noticed she was there, but he put the sheets down nonetheless.

“I’m listening.”

“The music you make is very pretty, but your lyrics suck,” Meg stated. “I’ll rip out my tongue before singing those things.”

“Sure, Meg, feel free to speak your mind,” Castiel said, wryly. “Don’t hold anything back.”

“So you’re going to keep doing… what you’re doing,” Meg continued, ignoring him. “And you’re gonna let me come up with the words.”

Meg wondered how come Castiel still had an intact face, because someone, at some point in his life, had to have wanted to punch him in that stupid little smirk of his.

“Does this mean you’ve decided to join me in this wonderful journey that’s going to have your new album as a result?”

Meg clenched her fists really tight.

“Yes,” she said. It felt like she was admitting defeat. “But no more ambushes.”

“Fine. No more pranks,” Castiel demanded.

“No more playing at the fucking crack of dawn.”

They stared eye to eye for a moment, almost as if they were waiting for the other to flinch and take back what they said. When none of them did, Castiel offered her his hand.

“Can we be friends now?” he asked.

“I don’t know about friends,” Meg said. After a moment, she shook Castiel’s hand. “Let’s start with partners.”


	5. Cabin Fever

Castiel couldn’t say that the days that followed went smoothly, but at the very least the temperature of the water remained constant whenever he showered. Meg started waking up at ten or eleven o’clock, which was definitely an improvement. She dragged her feet to the kitchen and came back with a cup of coffee and a lit cigarette between her fingers before she sat down next to the piano and groaned: “Okay, what do we got?”

“First of all, would it kill you to use a coaster or an ashtray?” he’d asked the first few times she had left her cup on top of his instrument like it was some sort of common table.

Meg simply grabbed one of his blank sheets and put the cup on top, or ostensibly let the ashes fall on the carpet. Castiel swore she was going to be the reason he ended up checking himself in a mental hospital. But he still needed to work with her, so his first attempt at doing so consisted on getting inside Meg’s head.

“What the hell is that?” Meg asked one afternoon when she caught him playing a Satan’s Bride song. It had been really hard to find the acoustic notes on the Internet.

“Well, I’ve been listening to some of your old stuff…” Castiel said.

“Why? I’m not writing those songs again,” she interrupted him. “If I did, they’ll probably sue me.”

“I’m trying to understand your style,” Castiel explained. “I’m not usually a rock fan, but…”

Meg lifted her eyes at him so fast it was amazing she didn’t get whiplash.

“I’m sorry, but how exactly are planning to write a rock album, then?” she asked.

“I can adapt. I did a seminar on modern music back at college,” Castiel said. “I was thinking maybe you could guide me, indicate me what you like, what are your influences.”

“Oh, sure. I can guide you,” Meg said.

Castiel should have seen it coming, but he still didn’t suspect anything when she brought down her IPod and put the earphones on Castiel’s head. She found the most scandalous song she had, and cranked up the volume so loud he went deaf for two days straight.

“You can’t study rock, you jerk,” she told him (or at least he thought he heard that through the buzzing in his ears). “It’s a gut feeling. You just have to go with it. Otherwise, it’ll suck.”

So that didn’t end well. From then on, Castiel stopped trying to understand Meg and just wrote whatever he wanted, and if she didn’t like it, well… she always made sure to let him know in the most irritating way.

Sometimes they would argue loudly and endlessly about the smallest details (whether or not Meg could reach a note that Castiel refused to change or the fact she mercilessly stroke out some of the lines Castiel was actually proud of), and they would get so hung up on them that they wouldn’t get any work done until late in the afternoon and sometimes until well into the night. It would be three o’clock in the morning, they would be on their third pot of coffee and about to pass out, but they would still stubbornly refuse to go to bed in the hopes of tiring the other into agreeing with their opinion.

“You think you can outlast me, punk?” Meg asked, with darts coming from her eyes and deep violet circles underneath them. “I used to sleep in bunker beds in buses smaller than your average college dorm and be ready for a concert with only three hours of sleep in me. Bring it on.”

“Yeah, well,” Castiel replied, feeling like there was an insomniac woodpecker living inside his skull but still not ready to give up. “I had a college roommate that used to have sex marathons for days on end. He made me wait outside in the dead of winter. You don’t know the things I’ve endured.”

And they would stare at each other until one or the other huffed: “Fine!” and marched upstairs to pass out on their bed for the next twelve hours.

One time, they had been woken up by Gordon barging in the living room and screaming at them. Castiel didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, because he was lying on his aching back on the carpet with a music sheet stuck to his cheek. Meg was sitting up on the couch and blinking at the security guard, like she couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“What?” she yawned, running her fingers through her disastrous hair.

“Oh, good, you’re alive,” Gordon said. “I thought something happened to you guys when you didn’t open the door for the cleaning service…”

Castiel rubbed his face and stared at Meg, who was clearly as confused as he was.

“Wait,” she muttered. “Who won?”

Castiel didn’t even remember what they were fighting about, and the fact she was asking was hilarious to him. Or maybe the lack of sleep was finally taking its toll and he was slowly but surely losing his mind, but the point was he started laughing uncontrollably.

“Castiel, this is serious!” Meg scolded him. “You can’t just ignore the issue… it was something really important…”

She couldn’t keep going. The burst of laughter coming up at her throat interrupted her, and the fact she was laughing was sidesplitting to Castiel. Gordon stared at them like he thought they had lost their mind, and that only got them to laugh even longer and louder than before. By the end of it, they were breathless and their stomach hurt. Meg’s face was red as she used her sleeve to wipe the tears from her face.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s call it a draw.”

Not everything was hardship, though. He had to admit, she had a way with words he hadn’t imagined. He thought he was good at writing lyrics, but then, whenever he heard them out loud, he realized they only sounded good in his head. Meg could take those awkward lines he produced and turned them into pure poetry. Not to mention she was eerily good at reading things in the subtext _he_ didn’t even now he had been trying to say.

“Change that note,” she ordered.

“It will sound discordant,” Castiel said, interrupting the song he was trying to write for the fourth time. He made a mental note to find out if California had the death penalty for manslaughter.

“That’s the point,” Meg argued. “Rock songs aren’t supposed to sound all pretty and perfect. They should sound angry and loud, and be about the things that make you want to punch walls. Like this one, for example.”

She put the sheet she’d been scribbling on in front of Castiel. Through the arrows and the thick crossing outs in black ink, he barely recognized the song they had “interpreted” for their friends the other night. Entire verses and words had been deleted and replaced by others. Meg was leaning over the keyboard with the pen between her lips, like she wasn’t done mutilating it yet.

“What have you done to it?” he asked, horrified. “You’ve butchered it!”

“I improved it,” Meg declared, not sounding even remotely guilty about it. “This is now the chorus, see? It brings out the main them of the song,”

“What do you know of the main theme?”

“Well, it’s obviously about a jilted lover,” Meg said. “Like, the person they’re singing about has hurt them by pretending they loved them, when in fact they only wanted to control them. _I’m tired of weathering your perfect storms_ – that line’s actually good, we’re keeping it in – obviously indicates this person is overdramatic and emotionally manipulative, so the singer is walking away from an utterly unhealthy situation.”

Meg finished her rambling and turned to him with curiosity.

“Personal experience?” she inquired.

“What? No,” Castiel said, shaking his head too hard for it to be believable. “Absolutely not.”

Meg arched an eyebrow, but simply said: “Alright.”

And she never brought it up again.

But reluctantly, Castiel had to agree Meg’s words were far more poetic than his.

After a while, she started bringing her guitar downstairs, which Castiel took as a personal victory but didn’t say a word when she snapped at him with an irritated “What?” Castiel helped her “translate” the melody from the piano to her strings, but Meg insisted some of the songs would sound better if she sang them over the piano.

“You’re going to be recording them, of course,” she said. “That’s on your contract. I know ‘cause I’ve read it.”

She seemed very proud about it. Castiel knew it was in his contract, but he still felt a knot in his stomach when she mentioned it.

“I’ve… I don’t know if that’s a good idea…” he stammered.

“Why not?” she asked, without raising her face from the notebook she had in her lap. “You’ve been on a recording studio before, haven’t you? You even sang.”

“Yes, but that was to record a small sample,” Castiel explained, flushing. “Charlie assured me not many people were going to listen to it. And it wasn’t like… you know… being on a stage… in front of a crowd…”

Meg put her pen down and looked at him, like this new piece of information required her full attention.

“Do you have stage fright?”

“No,” Castiel lied. Meg smiled at him, because that pathetic attempt at denial was just too amusing to her. “I can play in front of a fairly important assembly of people,” Castiel insisted. He didn’t mention his most crowded concert was that of a doctor that had been really popular among his patients, so his funeral had been a little more busy than usual. In any case, the mourners never paid much attention to him, so he could get away with making mistakes. “It’s the idea of playing in front of an entire arena that freaks me out,” Castiel confessed in the end. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“I imagine them all naked,” Meg shrugged.

“Really? Does that help?”

“Yeah, obviously,” she said. “Almost as good as making gargles with a golden fish down my throat.”

He stared at her for what felt like a really long time. Meg chortled, and Castiel realized she was pulling his leg.

“Oh, that’s funny,” he muttered, annoyed. “Very funny and mature, Meg.”

“It _is_ funny,” she said, and added in a mocking singsong: “I found out something about you.”

“Pray tell, why does that matter to you?” Castiel asked.

“Well, we’ve been living together for over a month and I realize we’ve barely met,” she said. “Benny says it’s good for my people’s skill to show interest.”

“I’m not that interesting,” Castiel said. For some reason, the idea that Meg wanted to know more about him disturbed him. “And I don’t know much about you, either.”

“You could know everything about me if you wanted to,” Meg said. Her voice had become bitter. “My entire life is on the Internet. Hell, even my tits are on the Internet, in case you’re interested in seeing those too.”

Castiel lowered his eyes to the keyboard, embarrassed. Not only because he had seen Meg sunbathing topless on accident, but because he had actually searched her online and never once wondered if she was okay with it. He’d just assumed she was used to people knowing things about her.

“I wouldn’t,” he said out loud. He meant to say he wouldn’t be okay with that constant invasion of his privacy, but Meg interpreted it as an answer to her comment.

“Woah, you know, a girl could get offended,” she said.

“I-I didn’t mean…!” Castiel exclaimed, turning around to her. “No, of course, I didn’t… I mean, you’re a beautiful woman… but it’s not like I-I… I…”

Meg was snickering at him, with her cheek on her hand and the pen behind her ear. She looked so juvenile and happy, with her long legs dangling from the couch under her oversized shirt, and the mischievous smile on her face. Castiel shut up altogether, in part because he realized he was about to say something really stupid, in part because he had never really dwelled on just how beautiful Meg was until that very moment.

Probably because he had been so busy dodging her pranks and trying to find something witty to answer to her remarks.

“Do you obtain some sort of sick pleasure of humiliating me?” Castiel asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Well, yeah,” Meg admitted. “But hey, you can’t say I’m not easy to entertain.”

Castiel shook his head and turned his back on her once more. He wasn’t willing to admit that she had actually got him to smile.

After all the work and fighting, they finally got two semi-decent songs to show for: one was _Star-eyed Girl_ , which Meg said she wasn’t ready to “touch with a ten-foot pole just yet”, and the other one they still didn’t have a name for.

“Well, let’s name it Song Nº 2 and call it a day,” Meg suggested one night around midnight. It was actually early for them to be wrapping up, but she was already stretching her arms like she did when she was tired.

“Are you feeling okay?” Castiel asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Meg yawned. “I’m gonna call Ash and tell him to drop by sometime next week so we can start recording.”

“Who’s Ash?”

“The sound engineer,” Meg said, standing up from the couch and stretching again. This time, the shirt lifted with her arms, revealing the male boxers she was wearing and bit of smooth skin on her stomach. Castiel made a point to look away immediately. “He’s kind of a peculiar guy, but you’ll like him. Well, goodnight.”

When Castiel looked up again, she was already disappearing upstairs. To him, Meg was “kind of peculiar”, so he imagined this Ash person must be absolutely bonkers. In any case, he would find out sooner or later. He stood up and went to his room, decided to catch some good six or seven hours to sleep, but when he did get there, his phone was blinking on his night table.

April’s name was on the screen.

Castiel swallowed loudly and didn’t dare to pick up, but when it stopped ringing, he realized he had seven missing calls from her. Panic clutched at his chest. What could possibly be so urgent? Had something happened back at home? To his mother?

He fumbled with the phone until he collected himself long enough to call back his ex-girlfriend.

“April?” he said. A strangled sobbing answered on the other side, and Castiel felt his knees grew weaker. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, cutie pie!” April cried. “I just miss you so much!”

“What?” Castiel said. “Are you okay? Is my mother okay?”

“Yes, everyone’s okay,” April slurred. “Except for me, because I can’t… I just can’t, Castiel, it’s so hard…”

The fear dissipated almost as fast as it had come.

“You’re drunk,” he understood.

“I don’t like the way we left everything,” April continued, dragging each word for so long Castiel cringed painfully on the other side. “I’m so sorry I said those things about your job and all. I was just really angry, you know?”

“Yes, I-I understand, April,” Castiel sighed, as he sat on the bed and rubbed his temples. A part of him wanted to hang up and be done with it, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him to do such thing. And if he did, April just would keep calling again. “Uh… maybe we should talk about this when you’re a little less… upset.”

“You want to blow me off!” April screamed. “I’m so awful that you won’t even talk to me!”

“No, April, come on, that’s not what I meant,” Castiel said. Oh, God, this was going to be long. “I… okay. What happened?”

April started a long and confused ramble of what her evening was like. She said she had tried going out with another guy. Castiel was not nearly as put off as April expected by the news.

“I understand if you’re mad at me…” she sobbed.

“Not really. It’s not like I didn’t expect you to move on,” Castiel said, calmly.

He couldn’t tell if April was annoyed or not at his lack of reaction.

The date had gone from bad to terrible in a matter of seconds. Castiel didn’t understood exactly what had been so bad about it, except that he hadn’t moved her chair for her and hadn’t ordered the wine April wanted and then he had spent half the time checking his cellphone until April accused him – loudly enough for everyone else at the restaurant to hear, Castiel imagined – of not being really interested in her.

“… and he stormed off after calling me a crazy bitch. Everybody was staring! It was the most humiliating moment in my life. I just wanted a little bit of attention,” April whimpered in his ear. “Was that too much to ask?”

Castiel was distracted, because April had talked for so long he had zoned out a little. Still, he would live to regret what he said next:

“Maybe you should have waited until you were alone instead of confronting him there.”

“Are you saying this was my fault?!” April bellowed in his ear, so loud Castiel had to hold the phone away. “How can you say that?! You’re not better than him!”

“April… April, please…” Castiel tried to say.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Cas, I’m sorry I screamed at you,” April sobbed. “I just miss you so much, and I was thinking about you when I got home. I wanted to ask you if maybe… maybe we can give ourselves another chance, you know? Because I love you so much, and I don’t want things to end like this.”

Castiel looked at the clock. He had been listening to April for two hours, he was exhausted and he had no idea how to answer to that. He knew what he should do. He should give her a firm negative, tell her he didn’t think they could make it work, and turn off the phone because he knew April would keep calling over and over.

He opted for an ambiguous answer just to calm her down. He would live to regret that, too.

“Look, April, it’s complicated right now…”

“Why?” April asked, after blowing her nose. “Things were always so easy between you and me, why are you saying it’s complicated now?”

Castiel wouldn’t have chosen the word “easy” to define their relationship. Yes, everything was “easy” when he just agreed to whatever April wanted, but she also knew exactly how to make his life a living hell if he didn’t comply. That’s how he knew she was going to get away with hers at some point. She was going to tire him out into giving her another chance, and he really was not in the right mental place to resist her.

“It’s complicated because I’m all the way here, and you’re there,” he explained, patiently. “This is something we can’t just decide on the phone. We need to talk about it face to face. And without any alcohol involved.”

There was a prolonged silence on the other line, and after a moment, April sighed.

“You’re right,” she said. Her voice still trembled, but at least she had stopped crying. “Of course you’re right. Okay. We’ll talk about it when you come back home, then.”

Castiel started wondering if whatever Roadhouse Records was going to pay him would be enough to buy himself a place in California. Yes, it was a cowardly thought. No, he didn’t really care.

“I’m so glad we talked, Cas,” April said. She sounded glad, almost as if she was talking with a smile in her face. “I’m so glad we’re on the way to fix things. I love you.”

Castiel couldn’t say it back without sounding like a cynical liar, so instead, he offered a half-hearted:

“Take care, April.”

And he hung up.

He spent the rest of the night with a heavy feeling of uneasiness on his stomach. By the time the sun came up, he had not slept a wink, and he was praying April had been too drunk to remember their conversation.

 

* * *

 

Castiel’s fingers stumbled on the keys for the fifth time that morning, completely ruining the melody he had got until then. He mumbled a curse, but when he looked down, he realized he was producing exactly the note the music sheet indicated. And that note made the whole damn thing sound catastrophic.

He tore the page in front of him, crumpled it and mindlessly threw it over the piano. Meg, who was coming out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand, barely dodged in time.

“Woah, dude!” she said, leaning on the doorway. “I didn’t do anything!”

“I know,” Castiel groaned. “I know you haven’t done anything, because if you had, we would have the entire album by now. But no, you prefer to lunge around and be just generally jaded with life.”

He didn’t realize he was screaming until Meg crooked an eyebrow in his direction.

“Okay,” she said, calmly. “I know you’re not PMS-ing, so what’s your deal?”

Castiel hit the keyboard with his forehead, producing a long discordant note that echoed through the room. His deal was he didn’t want to go back to April, but he hadn’t had the guts to tell her that. His deal was that he had got used to the perpetual sunny days, and the boulevards and the actual Mexican food, and he didn’t want to turn his back on all of that. His deal was that he couldn’t focus that morning, and he needed a nap desperately.

“I can’t write it down,” he said, with his face still on the keyboard. “I can hear it, inside of my head. But I just can’t… put it here,” he said, pointing at the sheets. “I suck at this. We’re never going to have the album in time. I should just tell Jo I quit.”

That was the only actual problem Meg could help him with, or at least he hoped so. Knowing Meg, he expected her to say something along the lines of “Tough, I guess we’re not working today” and disappear inside her room to… do whatever she did. What did she do there, anyway? Read? Chain-smoke? Binge on Netflix? Develop a plan for world domination?

Meg surprised him, though. She put the cup down (grabbing another of his music sheets as a coaster) and sat by his side on the bench. She ran her fingers through his messy hair like Castiel was a stressed cat until he looked up.

“I think you’ve got a little case of cabin fever,” she said. “I get it. We’ve been stewing up inside this place for ages. It’s no wonder you’re losing your inspiration.”

“It’s never happened before,” Castiel said.

That wasn’t technically true, though. During the time he had been working for April’s father, he hadn’t composed a thing, though he tried. He had told himself then that the constant contact with death was that inhibited him. But it was also true that back then he had been going from his home to work to his home again in an endless, maddening loop. That couldn’t be good for anyone’s inspiration.

“You need to get some fresh air,” Meg said, touching his nose with her index finger. “Or you’ll start punching walls and axing doors.”

“Okay,” Castiel said. He was desperate enough to follow whatever advice she had, even if it implied something like making gargles with a golden fish in his throat. “So how do we do that?”

Meg’s smirk made him wish he hadn’t asked.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t believe this is a good idea, Meg,” Castiel protested. “There is a myriad of troubles we could get into. Maybe we should just call Dean.”

“I’m a big girl. In fact, I’m turning twenty-nine next year,” Meg replied. “I think I can go out without a freaking babysitter for one night.”

Castiel was tempted to ask then why was she behaving like a teenager escaping her parent’s vigilance, complete with a dark hoodie. She had told him to “dress presentably”, but as far as he could see, she had only put on a pair of torn jeans and sneakers, although she was carrying a large bag.

“Just act natural, okay?” Meg told him, as she dragged him to the security booth at the gates.

The security man at the booth (it wasn’t Gordon, and the plaque on his shirt informed them his name was “Campbell, S.”) was completely bold and so stern-looking enough that Castiel was a little intimidated when he pierced them with his eyes.

“Yes?” he asked, and immediately added: “If you need me to go out for your dinner or something, I’ll have you know I am not your shop boy.”

Meg’s smile was polite, although Castiel guessed she was irritated by the way she clenched her fist.

“I just need you to open the gates for us, please,” she said.

“Why?” Campbell asked, squinting at them. “Are you going out?”

“Yeah, Dean can’t find anywhere to park the car,” Meg explained, adding her characteristic eye roll to make it more believable. “So he called us and asked us to go to him.”

Campbell was obviously not buying it.

“I haven’t been informed that he was coming to pick you up,” he said.

“We don’t have to inform you of our every move,” Meg scoffed. “You’re just a glorified doorman, after all.”

“Meg, that was mean,” Castiel intervened. Campbell didn’t seem to be responding too well to her diva act, because he was frowning at them and probably insulting their mothers internally.

“I am mean,” Meg replied, flipping her head back. “Listen, we’re going to be late, and this is not one of those things you can be fashionably late to. So unless you want me to put on a bad word to your bosses, you’re going to open this gate. Right now.”

The guard stared at Meg, still hesitating to obey, but in the end he muttered: “Ugh, fine,” and manipulated the controls.

“Thank you,” Castiel said, because Meg was already walking away without a second look at the guard.

“Yeah, yeah,” Campbell replied. “If you get killed by a crazy fan, it wasn’t my fault.”

Castiel trotted miserably behind Meg and caught up to her just before she disappeared around the corner.

“Do you think this is wise?” he asked once more.

“God, would you just chill?” Meg said.

She unzipped her hoodie and threw it at Castiel’s face, so he only saw what was underneath it once he managed to take it off his face. And then he stood paralyzed with his eyes fixed on Meg.

“What?” she asked, as she pulled up the burgundy corset she was wearing. Her shoulders were uncovered, revealing a falcon with spread wings she had tattooed in the center of her back, and when she turned around to him, Castiel noticed her lips were painted blood red and her eyes were adorned by winged eyeliner. She was searching for something inside the big bag she brought, and not paying attention to Castiel’s astonishment.

“Nothing,” he said, after swallowing heavily.

“Good,” Meg said, taking out a fingerless glove from the bag. “Be a good boy and get us a taxi, will you?”

Castiel forced himself to snap out of it, and waved his arms at the busy avenue. A car parked in front of them, and Castiel opened the back door for Meg. It was a reflex action, but Meg seemed to find it funny, because she stopped for a second to smile at him.

“What?” Castiel asked, self-conscious.

“Nothing,” Meg replied and slid inside.

“Ah, hell, no,” said the driver as soon as he saw them. “Listen, if you start having sex back there, I’m stopping this thing and kicking you out.”

“Oh, no, we don’t…” Castiel stammered, blushing furiously, and then he stopped talking altogether because his tongue felt heavy and all the blood was being drained from his brain to flow downwards. Meg had just taken out a roll of cash from between her breasts.

“Take us where we want to go and then pick us when we call you,” she told the taxi driver, showing him the money. “And there’ll be another one of these for you at the end of the night.”

“Rufus Turner at your service, miss,” the driver said, snatching the roll from Meg’s hands. “The sex rule still applies though.”

Meg gave him an address and immediately took off her sneakers.

“Where exactly are we going?” Castiel asked, not for the first time, as she took out a couple of high heel sandals from the bag.

“Oh,” she smirked. “To a magical place.”


	6. Nightlife

The “magical place” turned out to be a club at the other side of the town. As Rufus parked outside, Castiel saw several people dressed in tight jeans and studded leather jackets lining up outside. Some girls had corsets like Meg, and some of the men had make-up even more outrageous than her. With his white shirt and his blue vest, Castiel realized he was going to stick out in that crowd like a sore thumb.

“I’m not sure about this,” he told Meg, nervously watching the blinking in the eyes of the skull over the entrance.

“Come on, you’ve never been to a place like this?” Meg said. She was smiling wider than he had ever seen her, and her eyes were shining with enthusiasm. It took her one look at Castiel to figure out what was going on. “Oh, you’ve never… well, you’re gonna love it,” she assured him. “We’ll see you in a couple of hours, Rufus.”

“You kids have fun,” Rufus said, gleefully counting his money. “I’ll be here deciding what I want for Hanukah.”

Meg grabbed Castiel’s hand and practically dragged him to the door. The reaction in the crowd was slow but obvious: several people leaned over to their partners and started whispering, and several people stood on their toes to catch a glimpse of them. Meg acted like she hadn’t noticed and went straight for the door.

“Name?” the bouncer asked.

“Meg Masters, plus one,” she announced. The bouncer looked at the list he had in his hand, and then offered Meg a wide smile.

“Good to see you again, Miss Masters,” he said, tying a couple of fluorescent bands around their wrists and pushing the door open for them. “Your private booth is waiting for you.”

Castiel gripped Meg’s hand tighter as they walked in, because there was a moment of absolute darkness, and then he found himself surrounded by a crowd of colorful Mohawks and torn fishnets everywhere. Meg simply squared her shoulders and started walking, the crowd parting for her like the Red Sea. The loud music and flashing lights disoriented Castiel, so he couldn’t exactly tell how far inside the club they had got before Meg pulled a curtain aside to reveal a round table surrounded by a velvety corner couch.

“Here we are,” Meg sighed flailing down on the couch. “Home sweet home!”

A fast guitar riff invaded the air. The crowd cheered and gathered around the stage at the other end of the club. Castiel and Meg were close enough to have a good look at what was going on there, but far enough to maintain a conversation without screaming too much. There was a girl with black straight hair that covered her face playing, shaking her hips and her head so hard Castiel wondered if she wouldn’t end up feeling dizzy.

“Who’s that?” Castiel asked, impressed by how fast her fingers moved up and down the neck.

“Me,” Meg laughed, lighting up a cigarette (Castiel had no idea where she kept the pack). “Ten years ago.”

“WE LOVE YOU, ALEXIS!” somebody screamed when the riff was over.

The girl on the stage smiled and bowed, as three other people climbed up: two girls, one with a guitar and another with a bass, and a boy that sat behind the drums. They couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen, and they were all dressed up in obligatory black. They lined up on the stage and Alexis began singing with a voice so sweet that it would have sounded better in a lullaby than in a rock song, but the dissonant effect somehow made it all the more special.

_Oh, come, take me_

_I can’t wait to feel the sting of your teeth_

_I can’t wait for my eternity…_

“Really?” Meg said, arching an eyebrow. “Is singing about vampires a thing again? I feel old.”

“Me too,” Castiel said, looking around at the crowd. “Are any of these people even old enough to drink?”

Like the word “drink” had invoked her, a waitress with blue hair and a black shirt with a band logo appeared next to their table.

“Hey,” she said. “What can I get you?”

“Two margaritas,” Meg requested. Castiel glanced at her. He wasn’t going to say anything, but apparently that was enough to make her feel guilty. “Fine, two _virgin_ margaritas.”

The waitress’ eyes shot open when she heard Meg’s voice.

“Hey!” she said. “You are…”

“If you hurry up, I’ll take a selfie with you,” Meg promised.

The waitress practically ran across the club to get their order.

“This is crazy,” Castiel mumbled.

“What is?”

“Everybody here knows you!” he pointed out. “You had a private booth waiting for you! Look, it says we’re V.I.P. here,” Castiel added, lifting his wristband so Meg could check it. “I’ve never been a V.I.P. on anything before in my life! Is it always like this? Do you show up somewhere and people just… recognize you?”

“Well, as long as it’s the right kind of people,” Meg said. “Ask anyone past the age of thirty-five and all they’ll know is that I’m one of those slutty singers who did a lot of drugs and got her nudes leaked. And I assure you, all these people here know me, but half of them probably hate me.”

“Why?” Castiel asked, cocking his head in confusion.

“They think I’m a sellout or that I’m a whore and they probably didn’t agree with _my very personal decision_ of leaving the band,” Meg said, rolling her eyes like she’d heard those opinions about her way too many times for them to matter anymore. Her sarcasm was not lost on Castiel.

“You really didn’t want to leave the band, did you?” he asked.

Meg smoked in silent for a moment, puffing out rings of some now and then.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it, but… oh, shit!” she exclaimed, looking at the stage.

Castiel followed her gaze and found out the blue-haired waitress had just climbed on it and was whispering something in the singer’s ear. Alexis appeared dumbstruck.

“What? Get the fuck out!” she screamed, and her words were amplified by the microphone for everyone to hear.

The crowd laughed, but it was obvious they were wondering why the band had stopped playing. Alexis covered the microphone and told something to the rest of the band, who reacted as shocked at them. The drummer went as far as to grabbing his hair and he was clearing muttering “No way, no way…” to himself.

“They told them I’m here,” Meg complained. “Dammit, now they’re going to ask me on the stage or something.”

The crowd was getting restless, but then Alexis turned her attention back to the microphone.

“Uh… girls and boys and variations thereupon,” she began. “They’ve just informed me that one of my personal heroes is here tonight: Meg Masters, from Satan’s Brides”

“Fucking hell,” Meg muttered under her breath as everybody in the club turned around, murmuring and obviously trying to catch a glimpse of her.

“This is so special for me, because she’s one of my greatest inspirations,” Alexis continued. She couldn’t stop gesticulating like she’d lost control of her hands. “And if it’s not much to ask, I’d like to ask her to come up on stage with us and maybe play a song? It’d be a great honor for us.”

Meg thumped her head against the table.

“I don’t wanna do it!”

“Meg, you’re going to crush these kids’ dreams if you don’t,” Castiel pointed out.

“I know,” she groaned.

“Come on, just one song,” Castiel insisted. “It’s not going to kill you.”

“How can you be sure?” Meg asked, lifting her head.

The crowd began whistling and protesting, and Alexis was looking everywhere, probably trying to spot Meg and unwilling to continue until she had. Castiel realized begging was getting him nowhere, so he changed tactics.

“You know, it’s weird that I’ve been working with you all this time, and I’ve heard you sing a little bit,” he commented. “But I’ve never heard you singing on stage.”

“It’s not that different.”

“I’m sure it is,” Castiel said. “And perhaps hearing you singing now would help me understand your style and create music more appropriate to it.”

“I don’t have a style,” Meg replied. “My style is trying not to fall off the stage and get trampled.”

Castiel, who had seen videos of Meg playing while she was still in the band, couldn’t help but to agree with her.

“Yeah, but now you’re sober,” he reminded her. “Maybe it’s time you find a new style.”

Meg stared at him with an unreadable expression for several seconds. The crowd had begun chanting something and the musicians were talking to each other, but Alexis remained where she was crossing her fingers and looking around.

Finally, after what felt like a really long time, Meg stood up.

As she made her way to the stage, someone realized because the reflectors were suddenly all pointing in her direction. Everyone lost it: there were lots of acute screaming and cheering as Meg passed them by. She stopped on her way to shake some hands and take some selfies, before she stopped in front of the stage. Alexis and the other guitarist girl leaned down to offer her a hand, in their enthusiasm, the three of them ended up sharing a really long hung. There were flashes of cameras everywhere, and Castiel could see cellphones that were probably videotaping the whole thing.

The bassists of the band, a brown-skinned girl with a curly afro, also ran towards Meg to hug her like they were old friends. The drummer boy had no idea how to react: it was like he wanted to hug Meg too, but he wasn’t entirely sure if he should, so he ended up offering her his hand for a high-five. They were all smiling radiantly as a helper brought another microphone onto the stage and paused to take a picture with Meg and Alexis.

And that’s when the asshole with spikes in his hair decided he just needed to let everyone know what he thought of Meg.

“You fucking poser whore!” he screamed. “You suck!”

Castiel felt the blood started boiling in his veins. That was completely uncalled for, and he knew that Meg had to arm-wrestle her self-esteem to get on that stage. He stood up, worried that he had forced her into an uncomfortable position. The band looked as indignant as he felt, and the bassist seemed to be screaming something no one could hear over the booing and screaming that ensued.

Meg, however, was not as vulnerable as Castiel had thought. She stood up in front of the microphone and calmly asked the crowd: “Who said that?”

The public stirred, and parted, leaving the guy with spiked hair completely singled out in the middle of them, like he was radioactive and nobody wanted to touch him.

“Come here,” Meg invited him with a hand gesture. “Come on, bad boy, don’t be shy. I wanna tell you a little something.”

Someone pushed the guy forwards, and the rest of the people followed that example. The guy clearly tried to resist it, but in a matter of seconds he was standing in front of the stage, with Meg towering above him menacingly. Meg smiled like a mantis about to eat her partner and squatted in front of the guy.

“This guy right here,” she said pointing at the heckler. “This guy with his stupid hair and too much guyliner _dares_ to call me a poser. He says I suck. Okay, alright, I’ll give him that. But I just gotta ask: did you jerk off to my nudes?”

Castiel couldn’t see the guy’s face from the angle he was standing at, but he would have bet his very last dime that he was red in the face and wishing for the Earth to open and swallow him. Encouraged, Meg kept going:

“Did you? Bet you did, because you’re so disgusting that no one else in the world would dare to put their hands on your tiny, crusty dick,” she said. There was a loud roar of laughter and some clapping. “You jerked off to my nudes because you know that’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to have me, and it _enrages_ you.” She leaned over the stage and grabbed the guys chin to force to keep eye contact with her. “Yet, if I asked you right now to get down on your bony knees and eat my cunt – I wouldn’t because I’m sure you’re so bad that Jesus will come before I do – you would do it without a second hesitation, wouldn’t you? Yes, you would,” she added, making the guy move his head in an affirmative manner. “So let me ask you this: WHO’S THE WHORE NOW?!”

The crowd went _nuts_. Meg stood up with both middle fingers in the air as the members of the band hooted and clapped like she’d just delivered the most touching speech in the history of everything. The guitarist was losing it, practically rolling on the floor with laughter. The heckler disappeared, engulfed by the crowd, and Castiel figured he’d leave the club before someone decided to lynch him.

“Oh, my gosh, she’s so awesome,” said the blue-haired waitress, that had finally appeared with their drinks and had stayed on her spot, transfixed as she watched Meg respond to the guy. “They throw so much shit at her, but she just bottles it up and throws it back at them. I love her so much.”

“Yeah,” Castiel said, absently. “I guess she is stronger than we give her credit for.”

Alexis was passing her guitar to Meg now, and she started playing a riff everyone recognized immediately: it was the intro to _Bad Reputation_ , a perfectly fitting choice for what’d just happened. The band joined immediately (Castiel found it sort of amazing that they could just play the song at the top of their heads) and Meg began singing the first verse adding her own personal brand of cheekiness:

_I don’t give a FUCK ‘bout my reputation_

_You’re living in the past, it’s a new generation…_

Everyone cheered. Alexis grabbed a microphone and joined in, so she and Meg started moving around the stage in an improvised choreography. They stood back to back and sang at the top of their lungs, their feet stomping on the stage, their hairs flying everywhere as they shook their heads.

_And I don’t really care if you think I’m strange_

_I ain’t gonna change_

_And I’m never gonna care ‘bout my bad reputation_

_Oh, no, not me…_

Castiel had never heard her voice so loud, like she was decided that the entire world needed to hear what she had to say. She wasn’t just performing. She was making a statement, with borrowed words and a borrowed tune. It would sound so much more powerful when she was presenting her own creations on a show…

And suddenly, Castiel had an epiphany. He looked around for a piece of paper and a pen, but he didn’t find any, so he took out his cellphone and started typing and writing down notes while Meg sang the last verse on stage:

_And I only feel good when I got no pain_

_And that’s how I’m gonna stay_

_And I don’t give a fuck ‘bout my bad reputation_

_Oh, no, not me, not me!_

Meg jumped off the stage and was caught by the enthusiastic crowd. Castiel had his eyes glued to her (it was easy to follow her red corset in the sea of black that surrounded her) until the crowd delivered her to where she wanted to go. Meg threw some kisses, shook some more hands and then made a swift escape to get back to the private booth. Her hair was damp with sweat, her cheeks were red and her careful make-up was completely ruined, but she looked happier than Castiel had ever seen her.

“That was awesome!” she laughed as she flopped down on the couch. “I hadn’t had so much fun in ages!”

“You were great,” Castiel congratulated her. Meg smiled at him and grabbed her margarita, but before her lips could even touch the glass, three girls with colorful strands in their hair appeared in front of the table.

“Uh, hi…” said one of them, while the others crouched behind her, timidly. “I’m sorry to bother you, Meg, but I was wondering if you could take a picture with us? Maybe? Please?”

“Yeah, sure,” Meg put down her glass and stood up again. “Cas, could you…?”

“Of course,” Castiel said, receiving the camera. The girls posed making devil horns in the air and thanked Meg profusely before walking away.

“Okay,” Meg grabbed her margarita without even bothering to sit back down again and took a long gulp. “It started.”

“What started?” Castiel asked, confused.

“Excuse me, Meg?” a boy with a nose ring approached them. “My girlfriend is a big fan of you…”

“Don’t tell her that,” the pink-haired girl next to him said.

“Can we take a picture?”

“Absolutely,” Meg smiled. “No, come here, you can appear too,” she told the boyfriend when he pointed at them with his cellphone. “Cas will take it.”

It went on for _hours_. People lined up in front of the table and shyly asked Meg for a second of her time. Castiel lost count of how many tablets, cameras and cellphones were handed to him. Some of the fans also had CDs for Meg to sign, and if they didn’t have that, they asked her to sign their clothes or their bags or their arms. One guy even asked her to write something meaningful on his forehead and Meg wrote in the tiniest handwriting: “To Greg. Hope you don’t look too stupid in the light of day.” She hugged them and shook their hands and smiled with more politeness than Castiel had come to expect from her.

“How come you’re so nice to them?” he asked when they had five minutes of peace and Meg could sat down to drink her second margarita (Castiel was on the fourth and he really needed to go to the bathroom, but he didn’t want to leave Meg alone.)

“Have you ever heard that saying about not biting the hand that feeds you?” she replied, rolling her eyes.

The fans appeared in sprouts, and between one or the other, Meg leaned over her table to look at the stage, shaking her head up and down and listening carefully to Alexis and her band. Castiel did too: they sounded like a ball of noise to him, and the fact they had so many people shouting over their music didn’t help. However, he had to recognize how energetic their rhythm was, and how they seemed to completely draw the attention of those attending. Alexis had that charismatic aura, the same he had thought Meg possessed the first time he had seen her.

“Nice!” she laughed, yanking him back from his thoughts. The band had started playing a cover of Aerosmith. “Guess they ran out of their own repertoire, huh?”

She leaned back on her seat with a yawn. She was obviously tired and starting to suffer from the heat: her make-up was a long lost memory by now, and her bleached hair was soaked with swat. Castiel imagined he didn’t look all that much better, so he suggested calling Rufus and leaving. Meg shook her head.

“I promised the kids I would stay to talk to them at the end of the concert,” she said, pointing at the stage. “And besides, I like this song. Wanna dance?”

Castiel wasn’t sure he heard her correctly, so Meg repeated the question, slightly louder this time.

“I-I… I don’t dance,” he stuttered.

“Come on!” Meg said, standing up and offering him her hand. “Just this one song. We won’t move from here, and no one would see you.”

It was nice of Meg to think that his problem was his stage fright, but it was actually a little simpler than that: Castiel had been born with a bad case of two left feet, and it became evident when Meg put her hands in the air and started shaking her hips. Castiel stared at her, not sure what to do. When he tried to take a step towards her, he practically stumbled with the table.

“Woah!” Meg said, as she caught his arm to keep him from ending face first on the floor. “You’re really bad.”

“Told you,” Castiel muttered, returning to his seat mortified. He was convinced that failed attempt would be follow by some relentless mockery, but Meg just lit on another cigarette and kept listening to the band until they finished.

By that time, the club had begun emptying little by little. Finally, Alexis said their goodbyes and they took a bow. The club’s DJ put some music on (Joan Jett and the Blackhearts greatest hits for some reason), but most of the people were leaving slowly, though some stayed to give Alexis and the other members of the band the same treatment they’d given Meg, requesting pictures and hugs and autographs on different parts of their anatomy…

Meg waited patiently with her drink in hand until the band finally could approach their table. By that time, the music had been turned off and there was no one left, except for them, the blue-haired waitress and the bouncer, who were picking up the plastic cups and empty bottles and putting them in garbage bags.

“Hi, hello!” Alexis greeted Meg like she hadn’t been on stage just a while ago. “Thank you so much! You really made my dream come true.”

“Oh, thanks to you,” Meg replied, accepting the hug. “I had a lot of fun.”

“I didn’t get to introduce you,” Alexis said. Her voice was hoarse and by the way she kept clearing her throat, it was obvious she wasn’t going to talk for a couple of days. “These are Krissy and Josephine, and that one is Aiden.”

“Hi,” Aiden sighed, and Castiel could have sworn he saw little hearts coming out of his eyes.

“Before I forget,” Josephine said, handing Meg a CD. “Could you listen to our record? We would really love to hear your opinion.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Meg said. “But from what I heard here, you guys are really good. You’re gonna go far.” She looked at the CD’s cover that read “ALEXIS AND THE HUNTERS” in really big letters. “Independent label, huh? I remember those days…”

“Really?” Krissy said, clasping her hands together like Meg was a saint she was about to pray to. “Do you have any advice for us?”

“Ugh, advice,” Meg said, shuddering. “I’m really not the best example…”

“Come on!”

“Please!”

“You’re so pretty,” Aiden mumbled, mesmerized.

“Okay,” Meg looked at Castiel like she was asking for help for a second. “Never look back. You’re not going that way. And always have in mind you are friends first and a band second. Oh, and don’t do drugs. Weed is fine, but no hardcore stuff. Promise?”

“Promise,” Josephine said. She looked incredibly touched. “Thank you so much.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence, and then Aiden asked:

“Can I touch your butt?”

The girls howled at him, clearly embarrassed, but Meg laughed and turned around.

“Have at it.”

“It’s just as I imagined,” Aiden said, after coping a feel. He seemed at the edge of tears. “Thank you so much for existing.”

Krissy and Josephine pulled him back and dragged him away.

“We’re sorry,” Alexis said. “He’s off his meds.”

“It’s okay,” Meg chortled. “Not many people actually ask before grabbing my butt.”

“I’m never washing my hand!” Aiden screamed from the other side of the club. Both the singers chuckled.

“Hey, don’t pay attention to the naysayers,” Alexis added. “Haters gonna hate. We love you, and there are a lot of people out there who loves you, too.”

Meg blinked, surprised. “Thanks. I… kind of needed to hear that.”

“We almost forgot!” Krissy said, running back with Josephine and Aiden behind. “Can you take a photo with us?”

“Sure,” Meg sighed, tiredly. “Cas?”

“Of course.”

That was the last picture of the night, luckily. The band said their goodbyes with more hugs and ‘thank yous’, and when they were about to go their separate ways at the door, Josephine screamed:

“Can’t wait to hear your new album!”

“Shit,” Meg protested. “Now it _has_ to be good.”

Castiel laughed. He wanted to tell her he found it admirable how patient and dedicated she was to her fans, even if she took it as a necessary part of the job. There were a lot of assholes in the world whose fame didn’t suffer a bit just for being assholes.

They walked in silence down the for once deserted street towards their meeting point with Rufus. After the scandal inside the club, the silence was almost deafening. There was a pale, faint light peeking on the horizon. Castiel couldn’t believe they had been awake for that long.

“So… your first taste of the nightlife,” Meg said, with a yawn. “How you liked it?”

“It was… different than I expected,” Castiel admitted. “I mean, I never thought I would become a professional photographer…”

Meg laughed as they slipped inside Rufus’ backseat. She kicked out her heels and pulled the hoodie from her bag after paying the driver because “I don’t think I’ll be awake by the time we’re there.”

“By the way, it was great how you handled that guy,” Castiel said, now that Meg was still awake. She looked at him like she didn’t know what he meant, and then it hit her.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, with another yawn. “Well, you know… they have to believe that they cannot destroy you. You have to believe it, too.”

“That’s a good line,” Castiel commented. “You should write it down.”

“Whatever,” Meg said, closing her eyes,

Castiel didn’t remember much of the journey back to Silverbell. He knew at some point he leaned against the window and closed his eyes. Next thing he knew, Rufus was shaking his arm and announcing they were there. He looked aside to tell Meg, but she wasn’t there. It took him two entire seconds to discover she had fallen asleep with her head on his lap.

Something in Castiel’s chest fluttered. She looked so peaceful and happy, curled up there in the seat like a content housecat. The warmth of her hair against his leg felt so nice it was almost a shame he had to move her…

But she was going to get a contracture. He touched her shoulder gently, and she stirred awake, rubbing her eyes forcefully. Castiel offered his arm for Meg to lean on while they walked to the door, where Gordon gave them the stink eye.

“The hell you coming from?” he asked. “I thought you guys were in there.”

“Open the stupid gate, Gordon,” Meg groaned.

Gordon raised his hands in the air, as if to say he was washing them from the entire business.

Castiel and Meg stumbled through the garden and into the house, where Meg yawned again.

“Hey,” she said. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“Thank you,” Castiel replied. “You were right, I’ve been cooked up in this place too long and that probably wasn’t good for my brain and…”

His words escaped him. Meg had just pressed her lips against his cheek, a graze as delicate as a butterfly’s touch. Castiel felt an electric current coming down his spine, but before he could react, Meg was already staggering backwards.

“Sleep tight,” she mumbled as she climbed her set of stairs.

“Yeah,” Castiel said, mesmerized. “You too.”

The energy her kiss had given him only lasted until he was in his room, where everything became heavy and slow again. He looked for a piece of paper and wrote down something he hoped would make sense in the morning (or later that day anyway) before passing out on top of the covers.


	7. Organized Chaos

Meg had declared that Sundays were a bore and spent the better part of it locked away in her room, probably catching up sleep from the night before. Castiel tried to wake up early and write a little, with “trying” being the key word there. Meg was right, he had recovered his motivation, but without her there arguing with him every step of the way it just wasn’t as fun. He never thought he’d see the day he’d find fighting fun, but there he was. Hollywood did strange things to you.

Monday morning was weird.

Somebody was breathing in his face, and for a disconcerting second there, his sleepy brain assumed he was back in Pontiac.

“Wake up, sleepy head,” April murmured in his ear. Her voice sounded unusually hoarse, like she had a cold or something.

“No,” Castiel said, sinking his head in his pillow and trying to remember whose funeral it was that day. “Five more minutes, come on.”

He pulled the covers over his head and started to doze off again.

A loud honk blared, and Castiel jumped awake only to roll over and fall face first on the floor. After he was done whimpering and groaning, he sat up to find Meg standing by his bed with an air horn in her hands and laughing her ass off at him.

“That wasn’t funny,” he complained, rubbing his chin.

“It was… it was hilarious,” Meg panted, flailing down on the bed. “Oh, God, I wish I’d filmed it!”

Castiel hoped that meant she wasn’t going to try that again just to get it on tape. He began standing up, and then he remembered he was wearing only his boxers, and his dick happened to be semi-hard. With a rush of self-consciousness, he grabbed the sheets to cover himself.

“Oh, come on, I’m no blushing virgin, I’ve seen one of those before,” Meg giggled.

“What do you want, Meg?” Castiel said, still clutching onto the sheets and inching away from her towards the bathroom door.

“You slept in,” she pointed out. “It’s almost eleven. Glad to see I’m rubbing my bad habits all over you.”

“Yeah, well…” Castiel began to say, but then he noticed Meg was wearing decent clothes. Not the shorts or yoga pants, but an actual pair of jeans and a clean white sleeveless shirt with the Rolling Stones tongue printed on it. She had also put on some eyeliner and lipstick. “Are we… is someone coming?” he asked, frowning.

“Yes, Ash said he’d be dropping by after lunch,” Meg said. “Thought I needed my keyboardist awake and kicking by the time he arrives.”

“Ash, the sound engineer?” Castiel asked, even more confused than before. “Why? Are we…? But we don’t have all the songs yet and…”

“We need to start recording some samples for Jo and the label,” Meg replied. “And Ash is bringing a drummer and a bassist with him, so we can graduate from acoustic to full on rock hit.”

“I don’t think we’re ready…” he tried to say.

“Sure we are,” Meg said, standing with more energy than Castiel had ever seen on her. “Come on, take a shower and get dressed. Breakfast is ready.”

“Meg…” Castiel called her, but she had already left the room.

Panicking at the thought he would have to perform in front of a group of strangers (and that his performance would be recorded to be heard by Meg’s thousands of fans), Castiel got ready and practically ran into the kitchen. Meg was sitting with her feet up on the table, sipping from her cup calmly.

“I still don’t think we should,” Castiel said. “It’s rushed, and it’s…”

“Sit down and eat,” Meg ordered him, rolling her eyes.

Castiel stopped complaining for one second to smell the scrambled eggs and bacon served on the table. His stomach rumbled in protest, and he figured he’d be better at arguing if hunger wasn’t a distraction. He bit a mouthful, and closed his eyes, with little sounds of pleasure ascending to his throat.

“You… you cooked this?” he asked. “You actually prepared food. Real food.”

“Why is that a shock to you?” Meg crooked an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” Castiel said. “I guess I just assumed it went against your strict junk food and snacks only diet.”

“Oh, aren’t you a charmer?” she said, taking a gulp from her cup and grimacing in disgust. “Ugh, this thing tastes horrible, but it makes me sound like a canary, so…”

Castiel watched her while he continued to chew. Her eyes were shining and her lips were curved up in a smile. Not the mocking smirk he was used to see, nor the beam she had shown to her fans while she posed with them. A completely sincere smile that complemented her relaxed shoulders and the glimmer in her brown eyes. And she hadn’t even tried to light a cigarette.

“You’re happy,” he pointed out.

“Hell yeah, I’m happy,” Meg replied. “This is it, Cas. The recording, the interviews, the shows? It’s all exhausting, but you end up loving it. You’ll see. Are you going to finish that?”

Without waiting for an answer, she snatched away Castiel’s plate and proceeded to devour the scraps that were left on it. Castiel observed her in silence, and couldn’t help to smile as well. Anything that dragged Meg out of her usual apathy and cynicism could only be a good thing.

 

* * *

 

Ash arrived less than an hour later and Castiel wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“Dr. Badass is in the house!” he shouted as soon as he crossed the door. “Give me some love, come on!”

He enveloped Meg in a tight hug, like they were old friends that hadn’t seen each other in a while… and then he did the same thing with Castiel, even though he’d only just met him and got his name wrong.

“Alright, nice to finally meet you, Clarence!” Ash said, running his fingers through his mullet.

“That’s not my name,” Castiel protested.

“You do look a bit like Clarence,” said one of the guys that had arrived with Ash.

“This is my crew,” the engineer introduced them. “This is Garth; he can play some sick beats on the drums.”

“Nice to…” Castiel offered him a hand, but before he knew, he was caught up in another tight embrace.

“Come on, man,” Garth said, patting him on the back. “Just let the love flow through you.”

“I think I’ve had enough of love, thank you,” Castiel said. Meg snickered as Garth let go.

“And this kid here,” Ash said, practically pushing the boy with slanted eyes and black hair forwards. “He’s Kevin. He used to play only classical music on his big-ass violin, but I’ve convinced him to do a summer internship with me. Be gentle with him, it’s his first time.”

“I’m not going to hug you,” Kevin said, to Castiel’s relief. “And it’s not a big violin, it’s a contrabass.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Ash shrugged. “So, I heard this place has an awesome recording studio,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Let’s check it out.”

Castiel only had been to the basement to look for the speakers he used to irritate Meg out of bed, and then to put them back in place, so he was still impressed by the glossy wooden panels and the practically untouched consoles. Still, he wasn’t as impressed as Ash, who seemed to be having a religious revelation.

“What you say, doctor Badass?” Meg asked him. “You think you can make me sound good with this thing?”

“Girl, be prepared to have your mind blown,” Ash said, as he sat in the wheelie chair like it was a throne. “You gonna sound so good the angels are going to ask you to join their chorus.”

He cracked his knuckles and ordered everyone to adopt “the position.”

Castiel still didn’t know what to think of Ash, but it soon became clear he was a ruthless worker: he made Kevin play the same bass line thirty two different times until he was satisfied with how it sounded, and wouldn’t get off Garth’s case because the beat was too slow or too fast. Not even Meg was safe from his criticism: he made her play the riffs differently, and interrupted after the first line of the first song to ask her if she needed a mint.

Finally, he got the three of them to play the song over and over until they managed to coordinate their notes, and only then he announced they were ready to record.

“Take thirty one, _Deafening Hate_ ,” Ash said in his microphone.

“That’s not the name of the song,” Castiel said, frowning.

“Yeah, but calling songs with numbers is really not that cool anymore,” Ash replied. “And you know, it’s kind of about hating the person you used to love, but…”

“It’s not so much about that,” Meg intervened from behind the glass. “It’s about loving someone who you know is bad for you and tiredly going back to them to avoid the confrontation.”

Ash stroke his chin a moment, and then spoke in the microphone again:

“Take thirty one, _Lessons in Repetition_.”

Both Meg and Castiel stared at him in stunned silence.

“That’s perfect,” Castiel mumbled, impressed.

“Told you he was good,” Meg commented.

The whole process took several hours, and then Ash kicked them all out to finish mixing the song.

“This is the part where artistry comes in,” Ash said. “The blend of all the instruments has to be perfect.”

“Whatever, Ash,” Meg said. “We’re ordering Chinese for dinner, you want some?”

“I’ll eat when my job is done,” he replied with the seriousness of someone performing heart surgery.

So Garth, Kevin, Meg and Castiel came upstairs and sat around the dinner table, sharing a big portion of chow mein and passing around fortune cookies.

“What does yours say?” Garth asked, getting all up in Kevin’s personal space and trying to read over his shoulder.

“You do realize these are actually not Chinese,” Kevin replied, moving his chair away from Garth. “They’re an American invention, and they don’t predict your fortune at all, they just have some meaningless pseudo-profound phrases…”

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Boring Facts,” Garth said. “But what does yours say?”

Kevin huffed nosily and broke his cookie.

“ _‘The longest journey begins with the first step’_ ,” he read. “Told you, meaningless.”

“No, but that sounds really cool!” Garth said. “Mine just says: _‘Beware of ducks.’_ ”

“Ducks are very aggressive creatures,” Castiel pointed out. For some reason, Meg giggled at his side. Castiel broke his cookie and pulled the little paper strip. _“‘New beginnings are always the scariest but most amazing things.’_ ”

He went quiet, because despite what Kevin said, the cookie was actually right. He had been terrified when he first came to California, but now he was happy, making new friends, working with wonderful people.

“Why are you staring at me, Clarence?” Meg asked, and Castiel snapped out of his daydreaming.

“Uh, I… I was just wondering what yours said?” he stammered. Meg shrugged and broke her cookie.

_“‘You will find love when you’re least expecting it’_ ,” she read and flinched as she crumpled the paper. “Ah, hell no! Who the fuck writes these things?”

Her disgust made Garth and Kevin snort.

“I have a question for you,” Kevin said. “Did you ever date Lucifer? ‘Cause you guys had this weird chemistry going on when you were on stage…”

“Yeah, that’s probably ‘cause we were both up to our eyebrows in chemicals.”

She obviously meant it in a light-hearted way, but it came off as wry and harsh. Garth looked down at his chow mein and started eating rapidly.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin said, lowering his eyes.

“Don’t be, kid,” Meg said. “First rule of the music biz, assume everyone is doing or has done drugs at some point.”

“I haven’t done drugs,” Kevin replied.

“Give it some time,” Meg shrugged.

“I haven’t done drugs either,” Castiel said.

“That’s ‘cause you’re a freaking angel, sweetie,” Meg said, and stuck her tongue out at him when Castiel rolled his eyes.

They looked at Garth, who looked around like he was searching for a way out and then changed the topic.

“So what _was_ his real name?” he asked. “Lucifer’s, I mean.”

“I never really knew,” Meg said. She looked as if she only now thought that was weird. “We only ever called him Lucifer and then he changed it to that, so…”

“It doesn’t sound like a wise decision,” Kevin said. “Like, yeah, it’s cool to be named Lucifer while you’re in your late twenties and you’re the lead singer of a rock band, but what about when you’re old and retired and have grandkids? What are you going to be, Grandpa Lucifer?”

Garth laughed so loud he almost fell from his chair.

“Oh, my God, can you imagine?!” he said in between chuckles. “A really old guy in a red unitard with little horns?”

“You kids get off my lawn or I’ll condemn your eternal souls forever!” Meg said, pretending to have a pitchfork to chase away some invisible teenagers.

The image was so ridiculous that Castiel joining in the laughter.

“Grandpa Lucifer,” Meg mumbled, wiping the tears from her face. “We need to write a song about that,” she told Castiel, resting a hand on his forearm.

Before Castiel could tell her he had no idea how they were going to pull that off, Meg’s phone began ringing.

“Oh, it’s Jo,” she said, after looking at the screen. “Bet she wants to know how everything’s going.” She put the call on speaker. “Hey…”

“What the hell, Megan Masters?!” Jo screamed without even saying hi. “When did you go out? Why didn’t you take Dean with you?”

“Uh…” Meg began. “I… I didn’t… okay, how did you find out?”

“Your face is all over Twitter,” Jo interrupted her. “And there’s a video of you on YouTube insulting some guy’s dick.”

“Really? How many views does it have?”

“Not the point!” Jo shouted. “You can’t just go out to a club and insult people’s dicks!”

“Well… he started it…”

Before Jo could keep scolding Meg, there was a stampede and Ash burst into the dining room with a frantic look on his face.

“It’s ready!” he announced, in a tone that reminded Castiel a little bit of Vincent Price screaming “It’s alive!” in the Frankenstein movie.

“Oh, hey, the song is ready!” Meg said, cutting off whatever Jo was trying to say. “Do you want to hear it?”

“No, I don’t wanna hear it!” Jo protested. “Meg, listen to me…!”

Meg gestured to Ash to put the song on, and he pressed a key on his computer. The song’s first notes invaded the air, and Jo stopped talking to pay attention to it.

Thanks to the combined efforts of Meg and Ash, Cas’ ballad about the last fight he had with his girlfriend (because that was what it was, if he was being honest with himself) had become a fast, catchy song, with Meg spitting the lyrics at the top of her lungs, with so much fury it was, as Ash had put it, “the musical equivalent of ripping someone’s head off with your bear hands.”

_…I’m done weathering your perfect storms_

_So I’m walking out tonight, I’m leaving with no note_

_And I know you’re going to blow up my phone_

_You’ll try to get me to go back to the start, but this time I won’t…_

Castiel hadn’t wanted to be so loud, but Meg had said it needed to be in order to transmit the anger, and she was right: by the chorus, the song escalated into an almost battle call against the lover’s insistence.

_I hope you choke on your words_

_And all the fire you spit_

_I hope it scorches your tongue_

_And burn away your lying lips…_

“That’s… that’s really great, you guys,” Jo said. She sounded sincerely impressed. “Oh, my God, I love it!”

“Yeah, we’re really excited about it,” Meg continued. “Castiel even suggested that it should be the first single?”

Cas frowned at her and mouthed: “No, I didn’t.”

Meg gestured at him to go along with it.

“Oh, yeah, sure, the first single,” Castiel said, hesitantly. “Absolutely.”

“First single? Really? We’re already there?” Jo asked, a note of panic in her voice. “Oh, no. I have a lot of work to do! Tell Ash to send me the song so I can present it to the board. We’ll have to set up interviews, and photo shoots, and… and… a video director! I need to make a list. Okay. Gotta go. Bye, guys.”

“What are you doing?” Castiel asked, frowning at Meg.

“Getting her off our backs,” she replied, throwing her cellphone on the table with contempt.

“Do you realize you are the one who is going to be giving all those interviews?” Castiel asked. “And may I remind you that we’re still not done writing?”

Meg’s smile disappeared from her face. “I might not have thought this through,” she admitted.

“Oh, you think?”

“No need to be unpleasant, Clarence,” she huffed. “I’m just going to call Jo and tell her to hold her horses… Ash, what are you doing?”

Ash pressed enter, and then looked at Meg all confused.

“Oh, I wasn’t supposed to do that?”

Castiel glared at Meg.

“What?”

“You’re to blame for any delays,” he told her, taking another bite of chow mein.

 

* * *

 

What happened next was that Meg was forced to wake up early every day, to Castiel’s amusement. She got two hours of uninterrupted writing (three, if she was lucky) to work with Castiel, and then Pamela, her stylist, arrived.

“Meg, I need you to sit straight,” Pamela complained, trying to apply the bleach uniformly on her hair, which was hard to do when the singer kept trying to read the music sheets over Castiel shoulders.

“No, change that note!” she insisted. “Not that, the other one.”

Ultimately, Castiel lost his patience so he stood up in front of Meg holding the sheet.

“I’m going to move the pen over every line,” he said. “And you tell where is the note you want me to change.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to do it from another angle, sweet cheeks,” Pamela said, pushing Castiel aside with a single movement of her hips. “I gotta get this work of art finished in half an hour and it’s not going to be easy.”

“Just put on some lipstick and eyeliner and be done with it,” Meg groaned. Pamela stared at Meg like she had just suggested they feed a baby to a dingo.

“How can you say that?” she asked. “You have to look your best…!”

“Pam, they’re gonna photoshop it,” Meg replied, sharply. “You know that, and I know that. So why do we even bother?”

“Still no reason you can’t look your best for the fans waiting outside,” Pamela said. “I saw those pictures on Twitter. Girl, I thought I taught you how to draw a winged eyeliner properly.”

“Okay, you can re-teach me later,” Meg said, gently pushing her aside to look at Castiel’s sheet. “There, on the third line where it says…”

“Hey, guys,” Dean interrupted them by sauntering in with a cardboard full of plastic coffee cups. “Thought I’d drop in early.”

“How did you even get in here?” Meg asked.

The answer was obvious: the Silverbell Mansion’s main door remained open most of the time those days with a lot of people going in and out incessantly: Jo visited them every other day to listen to their progress and consult with Meg what she should write on her social media platforms (“Does anybody actually think those tweets come from me?”); Benny came over to check on them and made sure Meg was eating properly and the stress wasn’t too much for her (“Here, try out this soup. It’s my grandma’s receipt and you need the iron.”); Charlie, who happened to be around the neighborhood a lot (“You said I could drop by any time so don’t go changing now.”) and Ash, who usually showed up around noon with his “crew” so they could advance with the recording (“I know Meg’s not even here, Cas, but does her not being here paralyze your hands? No? Didn’t think so. Get on with it.”)

Actually, the only person who wasn’t there most of the time was Meg herself. Dean and Jo would show up early in the morning to hush her away to magazine or music blogs interviews. That meant she was gone for hours because that implied photo shoots and dress changing on top of the interviews themselves. When it wasn’t that, she was discussing video concepts with directors and art concept for the cover art of the record.

“Which we still haven’t finished!” Castiel reminded Jo whenever he had the chance.

“And it would be finished a lot faster if you stopped dragging me away from my composer and my recording crew,” Meg added with a groan.

“Fine, fine!” Jo agreed after a lot of nagging from the both of them. “Geez, I never thought I’d see the day you two agreed on something.”

“I can’t do it,” Meg said, spread all over the couch with an arm covering her arms to protect her eyes from the light. “You’re going to kill me. I’m going to die a year too late to get into the twenty-seven club.”

Jo huffed irritated at her over-dramatics, but Castiel couldn’t help the snicker that slid through his teeth.

“Alright,” Jo accepted, throwing her arms in the air. “One last interview, and then I promise I’ll leave you alone for three entire weeks.”

Meg put down her arm. “What’s in three weeks?”

“It’s when we’ll start shooting the video,” Jo said, shrugging almost apologetically.

Meg let out a long, drawn out whine, and turned to Castiel who, as usual, was sitting on the piano bench.

“Cas,” she said, extending a hand towards him. “If I don’t make it, send all my fans a fruit basket.”

“Okay,” Castiel said, chewing the tip of his pen worriedly. “I’m going to need some help to put together so many of them, but…”

Meg chuckled, and Jo rolled her eyes.

“Alright, one last interview,” Meg sighed. “Who’s the sucker?”

Jo tapped her foot on the ground, uncomfortable, and then mumbled something.

“No!” Meg complained. “That guy’s an asshole!”

“I know,” Jo said, cringing. “But he has a wide audience, and he’s going to feature your song for the first time. He _asked_ for the exclusive, Meg.”

“Yeah, he probably did it because he wants to make me the punch line of one of his jokes,” Meg pointed out.

“That might be the case,” Castiel intervened. “But I truly believe that if someone can handle him, that’s you.”

Meg lifted her eyes at him really slowly. Castiel feigned indifference, but the intensity of her stare made him nervous for some reason.

“You really think that, Clarence?”

“I don’t understand your need to insist on that nickname,” Castiel said. “But yes, I do think so. They have to believe they cannot destroy you, right?”

Meg gave a hint of a smirk before sighing deeply.

“Okay,” she told Jo. “Set the stupid interview.”

Jo could’ve afforded to look less happy about it.

 

* * *

 

“And now the moment you’ve all been expecting, dear listeners,” Gabriel Speigh said into the microphone. “Two months ago, Meg Masters announced she was recording her new album. And we were all kind of skeptical, me more than anyone. But I listened to the first single, and let me tell you, it is _not_ what anyone was expecting. I am here with her right now… and her really tall lawyer who will make sure I don’t overstep my boundaries and say something stupid that’ll get my ass sued.”

There was a roll of drums and canned laughter. Meg hoped to God they were not going to use those effects the entire time.

She hadn’t met Gabriel, better known by his host nickname, the Trickster, before that moment. He wasn’t what she imagined. For starters, he was a lot shorter than her, especially since she was wearing high heels when she strutted inside the station for her interview, flanked by both Winchester brothers. Dean to make sure no one shot her, Sam to make sure no one insulted her. They were both standing behind the glass with the DJ, who was glancing at them nervously out of the corner of his eye.

“Welcome to the show, Meg.”

“Thank you, I’m glad to be here.”

“Are you really?” Gabriel asked, arching an eyebrow.

“No, that’s what my manager told me to say,” Meg replied. There DJ didn’t put on the canned laughter until Gabriel himself laughed.

“Hey, I know I said some mean things about you in the past,” he said. “But I heard your new song, and I was like ‘ _Holy crap, I gotta take it all back now._ ’ When did you start getting good?”

“I was always good,” Meg replied. “You just didn’t notice.”

“Fair enough,” Gabriel chuckled. “Alright, we’re going to put the song on air now, and while the listeners enjoy it, I’m gonna ask you some questions. Remember, you can watch this entire interview on thetricksterla dot com. Without further ado, here’s Meg Masters’ brand new single, _Lessons in Repetition_.”

The red light that indicated they were on the air turned off and Gabriel made a pause to take a sip from his water.

“So this song is different,” he said. “I like the feeling of it. It’s like a really angry song.”

“It is, it is very angry,” Meg said. “It’s just transmitting the anger of someone not respecting you enough to let you go, even when you’ve stated clearly you’re not interested in staying, and just being unable to break that toxic cycle.”

“Is it about your former band mates? Okay, the big guy just made a gesture,” Gabriel said, opening his eyes with fear. “I don’t like that, I take the question back.”

Meg glanced at Sam, who was standing very close to the glass with his arms crossed. She had to laugh at how terrified Gabriel was before answering.

“No, I don’t think it’s about anyone in particular,” she said. “Just… a bunch of abstract anger.”

“I like that, sounds like you could start a brand new music movement based on ‘abstract anger’,” Gabriel said, drawing air quotes. “What has changed between your first record and this one?”

“A lot,” Meg nodded. “After the first record I was fresh out of rehab, barely getting back on my feet. I wasn’t as involved in the process; I wasn’t as interested either. This second album…”

Gabriel lifted a finger for her to go quiet. The red light was on again.

“And we’re back! Meg Masters is joining me here today, and she was telling me why this album is more interesting than the first.”

He made a pause and it took Meg a second to understand she was supposed to continue with the question.

“Well, there’s a lot going on with this album,” she said, trying to recover her train of thought. “I’ve got a new writing partner. He just… brings out the best of me, musically speaking.”

“That he does,” Gabriel nodded. “Tell us about this guy, he sounds great.”

“He is,” Meg said, smiling. “Uh, his name is Castiel Novak. He is a wicked talented pianist; in fact, he’ll be playing the keyboards on the new album.”

“He’ll be joining you for your tour, too?”

“No, he has stage fright,” Meg laughed. “It’s actually really cute.”

“Ah,” Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Am I detecting a little bit of a crush?”

“What? No!” Meg replied, almost too aggressively. “H-He has a girlfriend. And besides, I’m not interested in having a relationship right now.”

“Barty Harrington’s a tough act to follow, huh?”

“More like he left me disgusted with the entirety of the male species,” Meg replied.

“OH, BURN!” said a pre-recorded voice, while Gabriel put a hand on his chest, feigning offense.

“Don’t say ‘not all men’, ‘cause I’ll hit you,” Meg warned him.

“Alright, alright,” Gabriel laughed. “I believe you. So when can we expect the record to be out? Can you hint a name?”

“Well, we’re not quite done yet,” Meg said, knowing very well that was an understatement. They had recorded only six songs and were thinking of scrapping three, but Gabriel didn’t need to know that. “So I don’t have a concrete date, but my producer wants it out before the end of the summer. So… we’ll see what we can do. I know we’ll be shooting a video very soon.”

“You’ll be breaking stuff in this video?” Gabriel asked. “’Cause this song is _made_ for breaking stuff.”

“I’ll pitch the idea to the director,” Meg promised.

“Cool,” Gabriel said. “In the meantime, _Lessons in Repetition_ is available now on iTunes, and I suggest y’all buy it ‘cause it will make you want to leave your a-hole boyfriend. Thank you so much, Meg.”

“Thanks to you.”

“And now for a commercial break, but stay tuned for more music and news about singers you thought were bad but turned out to be awesome.”

The red light went off again, and Gabriel took a long gulp of his glass of water.

“Off the record, the song _is_ about Lucifer, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Thank you for having me, Speigh,” Meg replied, shaking his hand.

“Good to have you back, Meg,” Gabriel replied, like Meg had gone on a long journey and was only now getting back home. It sounded strangely appropriate.


	8. Bad Timing

For once, there was complete silence in Silverbell when Meg arrived. No unexpected visitors, no sponsors trying to feed her, not even Ash doing his musical experiments. Just Cas, sitting in front of the piano, the rustle of his pencil against the paper as he quietly hummed to himself whatever new melody he was hearing in his brain. Meg didn’t want to interrupt him, but she also didn’t feel like she had the strength to climb the stairs, so she decided lying face down on the carpet for a while was a good middle point.

“Hey,” Castiel greeted her when he realized she was there. “How was the photo shoot?”

Meg’s answer was a frustrated groan. Castiel chuckled and stood up just to go lie down next to her.

“I’ve been writing this,” he said, as Meg rolled over to look at him. “You’re going to have to fix the words, of course…”

“ _California Fight_?” Meg read the title. “What’s it about?”

“Well, I was thinking about the first months I spent here,” Castiel said. “How excited I was when I arrived, how disappointed when the production of the movie ran out of money. Then I met you and everything changed crazily fast… it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster.”

“Yeah,” Meg said, putting the music sheets aside. “That’s Hollywood for you. One day you’re adored by millions, then you’re a punch line, then suddenly they love you again.”

“Exactly,” Castiel nodded. “It’s extremely confusing.”

Meg watched the wooden rafters above them like she was seeing them for the first time, thinking about how much of a cliché it was to sing about California, but she didn’t have the heart to tell Cas.

“Well, we’ll have time to work on it,” she sighed, in the end.

“Yeah,” Castiel moved his neck to look at Meg’s profile. “I missed you. Things get boring without you here.”

She had no idea why, but that made her smile. She too had missed spending the whole day fighting with him about something as minimal as a note or a word. She realized it was the first time someone was as intensely involved with her job as she was. The first time someone cared so much.

“We make a good team,” she said.

“Bizarrely, yes,” Castiel replied. “Not at all what I came to expect, but… uh, Meg? What are you doing?”

Meg had propped herself up on an elbow and was cupping Castiel’s cheek with her free hand to get him to look directly at her.

“Testing out a theory,” she said, simply.

She had noticed before that Castiel was a good-looking guy (she would have to have been blind, deaf and stupid not to), but it was the first time she honestly wondered if she was attracted to him. Well, it was obvious Castiel was attracted to her, at the very least. His breathing was hitching and his chapped lips were parted. The skin under Meg’s fingertips was burning from all the blood rushing to his face.

“I, uh…” he mumbled, nervously.

“Do you still have a girlfriend?” Meg asked. It was a simple matter of respect. If he said yes, she was going to get up and pretend like she hadn’t notice the way Cas’ pupils were dilating right now.

“No… yes,” Castiel sighed. “It’s complicated.”

Meg moved her hand, but she stayed exactly where she was, waiting for an explanation.

“April and I have been together for a while,” he started, after a pause.

“Let me guess,” Meg smirked. “High school sweethearts, you lost your virginity to her on prom night?”

“No,” Castiel said, blushing even more furiously to her amusement. “I met her while I was a college freshman,” he clarified. He still hesitated before adding in a whisper: “But I did lose my virginity to her.”

“I knew it,” Meg chuckled. “You’re totally the type who marries his first girlfriend.”

“Yeah, well, that was exactly the problem,” Castiel sighed. “She wanted us to get married, I wanted to come here and write music. I was about to go back home when you hired me and she didn’t like it that I chose to stay. So things are… muddy, right now.”

Meg got the impression she was getting the watered down version of the story, but she didn’t push. If there was one thing she had come to appreciate thanks to the utter lack of it, it was privacy.

“Why you ask?”

“No reason,” Meg shrugged. “Just, uh… today people asked me if I was sleeping with you.”

If Castiel had been eating or drinking something, he would have choked on it.

“What?!”

“Yeah, totally uncalled for,” Meg said, rolling her eyes. Those weren’t the words Gabriel had used, to be fair, but she had learned to read between the lines during interviews. “Like I sleep with every guy I work with. That happened like… once. Okay, maybe twice,” she admitted. At least that got Castiel to laugh at the awkward moment.

They stayed in silence for an inappropriately long amount of time. Just when Meg was beginning to wonder if she had made Castiel too uncomfortable, he said quietly:

“I would.”

Meg blinked twice and looked at him again. “What?”

“I would,” he repeated. “You are… unpredictable. Mercurial. Messy. I can’t help but to be fascinated by you. So I would… sleep with you. Maybe that’s where they get the impression.”

He was very obviously avoiding her gaze, but the sincerity of his voice was beyond any doubt. Meg was dumbstruck. Of course, she had realized, but she never expected him to just come out and say it so bluntly.

“Huh,” she muttered. “That’s interesting.”

“What is?” Castiel asked, nervously.

“You are thousands of miles away from April,” Meg pointed out. “And you just straight up admitted you’d sleep with another woman. So maybe things are not as muddy as you say.”

She stood up (she made sure to grab the new song’s score) and without even glancing at him again, she escaped upstairs. Of course, she walked very slowly, so it wouldn’t be obvious that she was escaping.

Her heart still pounded like it was about to jump out of her chest, and she had to lean against her bedroom’s door for a very long time.

 

* * *

 

Castiel spent the entire night without sleeping a wink, feeling like the most useless, clumsy human being to ever set a foot on God’s green earth. He couldn’t begin to explain what the hell had possessed him to tell Meg that. It was true and he’d realized it while they were lying together on that stupid carpet, so close he could feel her breath on his face.

And it had struck him like a lightning bolt that he hadn’t felt that attracted to anyone in a while. It was amazing the range of emotions that woman put him through: sometimes she made him want to tear his hair out, true, but other times she left him speechless, his heart racing and his palm sweaty, and he’d just stared at her and let the worlds roll out of his tongue before he could realize what he was saying.

Meg had put on a poker face, but she certainly thought he was an idiot (he felt like one, too) and she probably would call Jo and… Did what he said classify as sexual harassment? Was she going to fire him and tell him she didn’t want to see him ever again in her life? Had he ruined the awkward friendship that’d bloomed between the two? Oh, God, he’d screwed up, he’d screwed up so badly.

He kicked the covers and began pacing around. His pulse was out of control, and it felt like the room was suddenly closing in on him. His instincts were telling him that Meg was probably still awake, so maybe he should knock on her door, apologize, explain he didn’t mean to…

He was halfway downstairs when he realized maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Maybe he should give Meg some space. Maybe they should talk about it in the light of day. That sounded way more reasonable than discussing it at two o’clock in the morning when he was in the middle of an anxiety attack.

He returned to his room and to his bed, only to stare at the starless night for hours on end, contemplating all the life choices that had lead up to this moment.

Despite his mood, Meg had been right about one thing. He _didn’t_ want a relationship with April anymore. So maybe the right thing to do was tell her that and be done with it. A clean break-up.

He calculated the time zones in his head, and decided the best time to call April would be at six in the morning, so he programmed his alarm to go off at that time and fell into a light sleep. At six, however, he realized it would be a shitty thing to do to call April so early and ruin the rest of her day. At noon, he decided, with his eyelids falling heavy on his eyes. He would call her at noon.

He woke four hours later (noon time in Illinois) and realized that it was a weekday, so that would mean he would be breaking up with April while she was on her lunch break, and he knew she’d be too upset to go back to work afterwards. He just couldn’t do that to her.

He dragged himself out of bed and stood underneath the shower, thinking that maybe evening was a good time. Although, what if she had a dinner later? Worse, what if she was dining with Naomi? The two were close; Castiel could expect a spectacular backlash from his mother if that was the case.

Okay, so maybe he’d call that night. Definitely that night.

But wait, he thought as he stared at himself in the foggy mirror, that conversation would take hours. April would make it last for hours, demanding explanation after explanation from Cas, and even if she didn’t, she would probably then cry herself to sleep.

In either case, Castiel was going to look like the bad guy. He had been the one who insisted on postponing the conversation about the future, and now he just called out of the blue to inform April of his decision? It didn’t seem fair. It seemed like a total dick move, in fact.

Castiel grabbed his head and suffocated the scream caught in his throat.

And he still hadn’t decided what he’d tell Meg when he saw her.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t have to say anything at all. Meg was at the kitchen table, with a steaming cup of coffee sitting on a music sheet (Castiel had given up asking her to get a coaster). She was looking at the floor, moving her head in every direction.

“Hey,” Castiel said, nervously. “Uh… what are you looking for?”

“My pen,” Meg said. “I swear; I had it in my hand not a second ago, what the hell did I do with it…?”

Castiel stretched his hand and touched Meg’s hair. She looked at him, disconcerted, until she realized he had the pen in his hand.

“It was behind your ear,” he explained, avoiding her gaze.

“Thanks.”

Castiel swallowed loudly and continued to the kitchen counter. Most people would be having lunch at that time of day, but somehow it had become completely normal to him to have a cup of freshly brewed coffee instead. Meg really was rubbing all her bad habits on him.

He turned around to watch the outline of her back. She was perching on the chair, sitting in the lotus position, wearing just a pair of shorts and one of her big shirts. His throat suddenly went dry. It was something he’d seen a thousand times, yet this one was different. He realized it might be the last time he shared such a peaceful moment with her.

He took a breath and ordered himself to have some guts. He sat by her side.

“Meg…” he began.

“I’ve been correcting the song,” she said, passing him the sheets. “It’s good, Cas. It really is. I’m thinking we should make it really fast-paced and loud, like the kind of song you hear when you’re speeding up on empty highway, you know what I mean?”

Castiel had a sudden image of Meg driving a roofless muscle car across the desert, her hair blowing in the wind and a pair of aviator glasses covering her face, a very loud guitar sounding in the background.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said, suddenly caught up in the idea. “It should start with a drum solo, maybe?”

“Nope, guitar solo,” Meg shook her head. “’Cause when you hear the intro and it’s just this really good riff, then you know shit’s about to go down.”

Before Castiel realized, two hours have passed, they had finished the entire pot of coffee and they had a new song practically perfected. That had to be the smoothest writing session they’d ever shared.

And he still hadn’t apologized to Meg.

“Okay, I think we’re good,” she said, with a satisfied smirk. She stretched her arms, and got up. “I’m going to get my guitar now, so I can start practicing.”

“Meg,” Castiel called her. “There’s something I need to…”

“By the way,” she added, opening her spiral notebook and ripping a page. “This is a song I’ve been writing. Check it out.”

Castiel looked down at the page. Meg had scribbled “ _Cold Faith_ ” at the top of it and there were a lot of blackouts and arrows everywhere. It was going to be a piece of work to figure out what it said.

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do, but I…”

“I’m in the mood for pizza tonight,” she interrupted him. “You?”

“Yeah, pizza is fine,” Castiel said. “But…”

Meg was already out of the kitchen. And Castiel was left with his apology pathetically hanging at the tip of his tongue.

That happened a lot during those days: whenever Castiel tried to say something, Meg came up with a question like: “What do you think of this verse?” or “I think we should move this part at the end of the song.”

Castiel got distracted, because for the first time since they had begun working together, there was actually compromise and harmony in what they did. Maybe because Meg wasn’t as interested in mocking him and pranking him anymore, maybe because they had finally came to understand how the other’s mind worked, but they were actually producing some beautiful songs without any murderous intentions towards each other.

They still fought over the tiniest things, of course. But it wasn’t so much about winning, it was about what was best for the song.

“You are being completely irrational and stubborn,” Castiel complained.

“Oh, I’m being irrational?” Meg said, picking up her guitar. “Listen to this thing, just listen to it.”

She played the part they had been fighting about and looked at Castiel like she had just proven a very difficult point. Castiel wanted to argue but something about what he’d just heard threw him off.

“Play it again,” he asked, tilting his head. Meg obeyed: the song was supposed to be slow, but loud, sort of like a power ballad. What Meg had just played sounded a lot like gospel, something someone would play at a funeral. “No, that’s not going to work at all…”

“Thank you!” Meg screamed, throwing her arms in the air while Castiel scratch an entire section of the song before writing everything again.

“Try this,” he said, passing the sheet to Meg.

She studied for a second before putting it down on the piano and playing the riff again.

“That’s better,” she concluded, satisfied.

“Much better,” Castiel agreed.

They stayed in absolute silence for a second, like they didn’t know how to go from there.

Castiel didn’t like that silence, because whenever they weren’t working on music, he became hyperaware of Meg. How delicate her fingers looked as she put the guitar down gently. The shape of her legs in the yoga pants. The way her hair fell over her shoulders once she released it from its bun, the dark roots that had started to show on top of her head.

All of it took him back to them talking on the carpet (which was right there, as a constant reminder of his clumsiness) and how he had blown up his chances by saying too much.

Meg rolled her eyes and looked away.

“You’re doing that thing again, and I’m running out of excuses to avoid this conversation,” she muttered. “Stop it, Cas. I really don’t care that you’re picturing me naked.”

The silence that followed was so tense than more than cutting it with knives Castiel could’ve grabbed it with both hands and squeeze until his sudden urge to scream had passed.

“How… what…?” he stammered. “I… Meg, that is not… I… I’m sorry,” he muttered in the end, hiding his face in his hands. But he had been looking for a chance to speak about it for days, he just couldn’t throw it away now. He took a deep breath and looked up at her again. “I should never have told you I had feelings for you. That was incredibly disrespectful…”

“Woah, who said anything about feelings?” Meg interrupted him, inching away from him on the couch with eyes open in horror. “You said you wanted to have sex with me. That’s not the same thing!”

“It is for me,” Castiel answered simply.

And there was the rejection and disgust he had been waiting and fearing. It had come from a completely different place than he expected, though.

“Okay, why is that worse?” Castiel asked, confused.

“It just is!” Meg snapped at him.

Castiel went quiet. They stayed immobile for a second, Meg with her eyes fixed on the floor like she was readjusting what she knew about him; Castiel wondering if that was his cue to leave her alone. In the end, she lifted her head and Castiel grabbed the edge of the bench, thinking that was the moment when she asked him to get out of her sight forever.

“My last boyfriend leaked my nudes on the Internet,” she whispered.

Castiel stared up, astonished.

“What?”

“I sent them to him during my last tour,” Meg said, still avoiding his eyes. “You know, keeping the romance alive while in a long distance relationship. When I came back, I was so excited to see him, so I went to his apartment. He was doing lines on his coffee table.”

“Doing lines?” Castiel asked. It took him a second to understand. “Oh.”

“I said, _‘Bart, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’_. He was like _‘Relax, babe, everybody knows that rehab shit was just an act you put on for the fans.’_ I was…” She put her hands in the air, curved like she had someone’s neck between them. Castiel nodded, comprehensive. “Long story short, we had a big fight,” Meg continued. “I went home, I talked to Benny. I thought I was going to be okay. Then the following morning, Jo calls me up and tells me my pictures were all over social media. Of course, I could never _prove_ it was Bart, but the timing of it was just very suspicious.”

Castiel couldn’t imagine how humiliated, how angry she must have been. Whenever she talked about it, she did in a sort of nonchalant way, like she was trying to signal it was not that big of a deal. But as she spoke now, he realized it was. Because of her job, Meg had very little privacy, and a person she trusted and maybe even loved had committed the ultimate violation of it. That sort of betrayal was bound to have consequences.

She looked so sad, sitting there on the couch, hugging her knees. Castiel wanted to… touch her, to sit by her side and hold her or put a hand on her shoulder. But he didn’t know how she would react to that, so he stayed where he was.

“The reason I’m telling you this…” Meg said, finally turning her head to look at Castiel. “I need you to understand, it’s not that I think that you would do something like that, but…”

“But he hurt you,” Castiel said. “And you don’t feel ready to have another relationship. I understand. I still… well, I haven’t clarified things with April yet,” he confessed. “My entire timing was really off.”

“Yes, it was,” Meg chuckled. Castiel smiled, sadly, and they stayed quiet for what felt like a really long time.

“So… what do we do?” Castiel asked, in the end.

“Well, I think,” Meg started hesitantly. “The best we can do right now is… not bring it up again.”

Castiel was surprisingly relieved to hear that.

 

* * *

 

Castiel woke up late at night (or early in the morning, would be more appropriate) with a piano song in his head. For a second, he thought he might have been dreaming a new melody, but as he recovered his consciousness, he realized it was actually an old one: _Star-eyed Girl_ was sounding somewhere beneath his window.

He rubbed his eyes and looked down. Meg was sitting in one of the lounge chairs, the smoke of her cigarette rising up lazily in the warm night. Next to her, there was a small portable speaker where the music was coming from. Her head was nodding slowly side to side, like she was dozing off, but when she heard him open the window, she looked up.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

Castiel blinked several times, wondering why that phrase sounded so weird. It took him a second to realize it was the first time Meg apologized to him. For anything at all.

“Yes,” he said. “But I wasn’t having a good dream anyway.”

Meg smiled and pointed at the empty chair next to hers. “Want to join me?”

Castiel should have said no. After the heavy chat they’d had earlier, perhaps it was best to stay away, to give each other time to digest what they were feeling.

So why was he putting on the first shirt he found and walking down the stairs? Well, because he was an idiot who couldn’t stay away from her. There were plenty other reasons, of course, but that was the bottom line of them all.

He cringed when his own voice received him, rising up on the open air.

“Why are you listening to that?” he asked, sitting down next to her.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about giving it another chance,” Meg shrugged. “It was the song that made me want to meet you, you know? Even before I knew anything about you.”

She wasn’t looking at him while saying that, but straight ahead at the clear waters of the pool. Castiel didn’t know how to react to that information. Except for trying to speak like his heart was trying to jump out of his chest and he didn’t have a sudden lump in his throat.

“I thought you hated it but…”

“I don’t hate it,” Meg said. “I was mad at you. I only told you that to hurt you.”

Castiel opened his mouth and closed it again. Meg shrugged, like she was not even sorry at all.

“We do need to work on the lyrics,” she continued. “But we could put it at the end. This is such a high energy album, it’s probably best if we finish it on a slow note. Like, when the party is over and all your friends went home and you’re tired and staring at the mess your house has become.”

“That’s not a nice feeling,” Castiel said, frowning.

“It is if the right person is telling you to go to bed and that they’ll help you clean it in the morning,” she pointed out.

Castiel was once more stunned at how easily she could come up with words to explain an exact situation. He never would have thought of that simile. So he tried to listen to his song from that perspective: the star-eyed not being that unreachable ideal, that girl he wished he had known (maybe the girl he wished April could have been for him). She was just a girl, with flaws and failures and a past that hadn’t always been pretty. She was a girl that didn’t make him feel weak in the knees and butterflies in his stomach, but a girl he could fall into a comfortable routine with, a girl he could come home to.

He liked that: a girl he could come home to. He thought about telling it to Meg, but she had closed her eyes, as if that would help her appreciate the song better.

The song ended in a note Castiel now realized was unnecessarily long. Meg took a drag of her cigarette.

“I thought I would come here to watch the stars while I listened to this thing,” she said. “I forgot about damned light pollution.”

“I don’t imagine you can see many stars in New York City,” he said. He immediately bit his tongue, because he didn’t remember Meg telling him about it. He had read it in her Wikipedia page.

“No,” she agreed, apparently not surprised at all Castiel knew that about her. “But you can see them when you’re travelling in a tour bus in a godforsaken road going to Nowhere, Middle of the Country. Or in a crappy motel somewhere, in a small town that’s not even on the map. You can step out of the room and just watch the stars for hours.”

She finished her cigarette and threw the butt away. It got lost somewhere in the grass around them.

“I miss life on the road sometimes,” she concluded. “I don’t miss my band, as much as I miss my friends. We used to wreak havoc wherever we went, you know? We put the music out loud, disturb everybody in the place, and just… danced. We danced around a lot of pools in a lot of crappy motels. Those were the days we weren’t even doing drugs, if you can believe that.”

“So when did the drugs start?”

Meg shrugged. She didn’t remember, or she didn’t want to say it. Either way, Castiel was not going to insist.

“I was never a good dancer,” he offered, after several seconds of silence. “Whenever April and I went to a party back in college, she tried to get me to dance, but the results were always disastrous. So in the end, I just found a couch somewhere quiet, and watched her dance with anyone but me.”

“Wait, she just went to dance with other dudes?” Meg asked, frowning. “While you were like, right there?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t care,” Castiel laughed. “I never did, really. At the end of the night, I knew April would be leaving with me.”

“And she always left with you?”

Castiel didn’t answer right away. He was about to tell her something she’d never told anyone, not even to his mother. And if he had, Naomi probably wouldn’t had believed him. Nobody would had, because April was such a good girl, and she’d be completely incapable of something like that. Castiel himself sometimes doubted it had happened.

“There was a guy,” Castiel started, slowly. “His name was Inias. He… I don’t know. I thought April and him were friends. I never got jealous. I was entirely sure April loved me, which, in retrospective, might have been a bit naïve on my side.”

Meg snorted. “I’ll say.”

“In any case, they hung out a lot, but I thought it was just that,” Castiel continued. “Then one day, Inias comes to my house and he tells me: ‘Listen, you have to let April go. She’s in love with me, she wants to be with me. You have to let her go.’ I was confused, I asked: ‘What are you talking about?’ Apparently, he was under the impression that April had been trying to break up with me for weeks and that I just wouldn’t take the hint. I was… I mean, if there were any hints thrown in my direction, I never knew. So I called April, I asked her: ‘What is this? Do you want to break up?’ She started crying. She denied everything. She told me it was Inias who was in love with her, and that she had been trying to get away from him.”

He stopped, not out of a narrative need to add suspense, but because he wasn’t sure how to tell the next part of the story. It had been a mess, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened.

“And?” Meg urged him. “Who was she trying to break up with?”

“I never knew,” Castiel confessed. “I mean, I guess it must have been Inias, because she stayed with me in the end and never talked to him again. But it always… bothered me. I don’t know what happened between them. I don’t know if Inias was just deluded or if there was something else going on. I just know I had trouble believing April when she told me she was going out with friends from then on.”

“But you gave her the benefit of the doubt and stayed.”

“What else could I do?” Castiel said.

His family loved her. His friends were convinced she was the best person in the world. They hadn’t been through her violent mood swings, and her dramas, and her accusations, just to turn all the tables in a second and throw her arms around his neck and call him her “cutie pie”. They didn’t know April was like a temperamental child, with a destructive side she kept carefully hidden.

Meg also had a destructive side, but she was honest about it. She put it in her music; she let it out in more creative ways. He knew the comparison wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help it.

“You could run away to California and have a secret affair with a rockstar,” Meg suggested, nonchalantly. “Oh, wait.”

It took a moment for Castiel to realize she was joking. He chuckled, and Meg let out a loud belly laugh.

“Come on,” she said, standing up and extending her hand towards Castiel, at the same time she touched her cellphone’s screen. _Star-eyed Girl_ started again.

“What are you…?”

“Let me show you a few moves,” she offered. “So you don’t have to sit on a couch during the next party you go to.”

Castiel hesitated for a second, but in the end he stood up and let Meg pull him away from the pool, to where they could feel the soft grass underneath their bare feet. She put her arms around his neck, and Castiel, completely uncertain if he should be doing that, wrap his around her waist.

“Not bad,” Meg said, as they slowly started swaying to the sound of the music. “I think you might have been selling yourself short, Clarence.”

Castiel couldn’t speak. It was like his tongue suddenly weighed a ton. They spun and moved very slowly, from one side to the other. He wasn’t sure he would call that dancing, exactly, but he did enjoy the heat of Meg’s body between his fingers, the little smirk in her lips. Her eyes were glimmering underneath the exterior lights of the mansion. Her hair had the aggressive scent of citric and herbs.

And, oh, God, he was dying to kiss her. To just close that gap between the two, forget about everything they said, everything that could keep them apart and just sweep her off her feet and take her to his room. He imagined what it would feel like to wake up in the light of day to Meg’s naked back towards him, to her messy hair and her sleepy smile.

Though, knowing her, it would probably be more like a surly grunt, a punch in the biceps and an order to let her stay in bed for another hour.

He laughed to himself and his stupid romantic fantasies. Meg looked at him confused, and then she started laughing again. If someone could have seen them, they probably would have thought they were crazy, dancing to a slow song and laughing like maniacs, their foreheads touching slightly as they continued to move lazily around.

And in half a minute more, the song would end, and they’d scurry away from each other, suddenly too aware of how close they had been, and they would mutter hurried “good nights” before running away to their respective rooms. And then the next morning, they wouldn’t talk about it, but Castiel would be thinking about it the entire day.

Thinking about how the world had stopped spinning right then and there, with Meg in his arms. Thinking about how he wished that moment would have lasted forever.


	9. Delicate Truths

After their three weeks of grace, Ash returned worse than ever.

“Okay, guys, that was awesome!” he told them. “Do it again.”

He turned off the microphone before it could record everybody’s groaning and complaining inside the recording booth. When the sound engineer turned around, Meg lifted a middle finger at him behind the glass. Castiel chuckled quietly.

“What’s so funny?” Ash asked, turning his attention back to the band. Castiel pretended he had no idea. “What are you writing there?”

“Oh, it’s one of the last songs we have,” he explained, looking down at his notebook. “Uhm… I can’t seem to get it quite right yet.”

“What’s about?”

“Just… about a girl,” Castiel replied, suddenly embarrassed for some reason. “A girl who has been through a lot but hasn’t let those things destroy her and she keeps being true to herself despite it all… why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason,” said Ash, although the smile of superiority on his face didn’t disappear. “What does Meg think?”

“I haven’t showed it to her yet,” Castiel said.

“You guys are like, awesome together, you know?” Ash commented. “Like a far less messy version of Sid and Nancy, if Nancy had known to play the piano.”

Castiel was going to ask who those were, but his phone interrupted him.

“Yes?”

“Cutie pie!” April said. “Could you please tell this very mean guard to let me in?”

“What?” Castiel frowned, confused.

“I’m right outside the mansion, but he won’t let me in,” she said. “He doesn’t believe I’m your girlfriend!”

“You’re outside the…? What?” Castiel repeated. “You’re in Los Angeles?”

“Surprise!” she chirped. “Come here and clear things out for me, will you? I don’t like the look he’s giving me.”

Castiel stood up, too shocked to even reply. It couldn’t be. This had to be one of those horrible dreams he kept having or maybe one of Meg’s prank. When he walked out, there would be cameras and everybody will laugh at his horrified face, and he’d be embarrassed but he’d get over it knowing April was back in Illinois instead of knocking at his door.

He opened the door to the mansion and looked at the gate.

He saw April’s light brown hair, her pink suitcase at her feet. As soon as she saw him, she started waving her hands and jumping slightly. Gordon was also looking in his direction, probably with a disconcerted expression on his face.

And for a second, Castiel wanted to say he had never seen that woman in his life and squirrel back to the recording studio and maybe never come out of it again. But that would be too cowardly even for him.

So instead he walked inside and picked the intercom of the gate.

“Gordon, let her through,” he told the guard. “I know her.”

“If you say so,” Gordon replied, cautiously. He probably thought he was letting an axe murderer in the mansion, and Castiel didn’t blame him for it.

He hung the intercom and leaned his forehead against the wall.

“Hey,” Meg called, emerging from the basement’s door. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Castiel lied. “It’s just, uh…”

“Cutie pie!” April’s cheerful voiced echoed as her head popped in through the open door. “Oh, geez, look at this place. You didn’t tell me it was so big!”

“April, what are you…?” Castiel began asking, but before he could finish, April threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down to plant her lips over his.

“It’s so good to see you!” April said, putting a hand on his hair and trying to squash it back into place. “I’ve missed my cutie pie so very much.”

Castiel still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react, or if he was going to react at all. April turned to Meg with a smile that looked more like the menacing grimace of a shark about to bite a seal’s head off.

“Oh, my God, you’re Meg?” she asked.

“In the flesh,” Meg replied. She seemed calm and even friendly when she extended a hand towards her. “April, huh? Cas has… told me about you.”

“I’m sure he did!” April commented, and Castiel had no idea how, but she made it sound like an insult. “Wow, it’s the first time I meet someone famous. I thought you’d be… taller.”

“I get that a lot,” Meg said. “So you’re going to be staying here?”

“Oh, no, no, I rented a room at a hotel,” April said. “I wouldn’t want to invade my cutie pie’s workplace.”

Silver lining, Castiel supposed. He saw the basement’s door cracking slightly and assumed Kevin, Garth and Ash were eavesdropping on the whole thing.

“April, we’re actually in the middle of a session…” Castiel began to say.

“No, that’s okay, we can go on without you,” Meg intervened. “Go spend the afternoon with your girlfriend.”

“Oh, yes,” April clapped, enthusiastically. “You can show me around the city. It’ll be so fun!”

Fun was definitely not what Castiel had in mind, but he was being ambushed and Meg was not getting his SOS signals.

“Go,” Meg said, turning her back on them. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“But…” Castiel tried to argue pathetically, but April was already dragging him towards the door.

 

* * *

 

Ash, Kevin and Garth were looking in every direction except at her when Meg returned to the studio.

“What?” she snapped at them.

“Nothing!” Garth said.

“Nothing at all!” Ash confirmed.

Kevin scrambled to pick his bass and pretended to be adjusting the tuning keys while whistling lowly.

Meg looked at them like she was already imagining how they would look with cream pie all over their trousers. But not even the sweet idea of playing a prank on them helped with the annoying sensation that she should have punched that April person in the face. Who did she think she was, just showing up like that and interrupting what up until that point had been a perfectly productive day of work? And she hadn’t actually said anything bad to her, but Meg still had felt the sting of despise in April’s eyes when she turned to look at her.

And that had been nothing like the stab in the gut she’d got when April kissed Castiel. She might as well have been peeing all around him to mark her territory.

How Castiel could be dating _that_ completely escaped her.

How he could have left with her even when he had told Meg…

She stopped thinking. She didn’t care. She had decided the best thing she could do to finish that record in peace was ignore Castiel’s _feelings_ (she still felt a little sick just thinking about it) and he had been alright with it.

And besides, she didn’t feel the same way about him. At all. If his girlfriend dragged him down to her hotel room and fucked him senseless, Meg could not give less of a shit. It was his life. It didn’t matter to her.

She walked back into the booth, grabbed the earphones where she had dropped them and planted herself in front of the microphone.

“From the top,” she groaned.

“Are you sure? Maybe we should take a break…” Ash tried to say.

“I said from the top!”

Ash jolted in his chair like Meg had slapped him, but nodded.

Meg took a deep breath and tried emptying her mind to focus solely on the music.

The rest of the session was a spectacular failure.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, geez, look at this skyscraper!” April exclaimed when the taxi they had picked up left them at the door of her hotel. “You don’t see things like that at home.”

Castiel couldn’t be mad at her anymore for dropping by unannounced. He too remembered how stunned he had been at how little sky he could see among the buildings when he first arrived there. They had both grown up in a very small town and the biggest place they had been at up until then was Normal, the tranquil university town where they had first met.

Los Angeles was a completely different animal. From the busy streets to the people walking around in skimpy and sometimes weird clothes like feathered boas, the monuments, the photographers hunting for celebrities, the noise… Castiel remembered being dizzy when he’d first arrived. April was not having that problem, apparently. In fact, she seemed ecstatic, all wide-eyed and excited. She reminded her a little of the girl he had fallen in love with in the first place.

“Do you think we can go to the Walk of Fame…?” she asked. Castiel barely heard her, because she had left him behind to struggle with the suitcase. Of course she did.

He finally managed to roll it up to the hotel’s lobby, where April was signing her check-in and still talking to him without realizing he wasn’t by her side.

“… I mean, we could always have dinner here, but your mother mentioned they’re paying you quite well, aren’t they?”

“They gave me an advance,” Castiel tried to explain. “The rest will come in royalties once the album is released and it’ll depend on the sales.”

“That sounds complicated.”

“It is, but…this is Hollywood,” he shrugged. He smiled when he realized those were the exact words Meg had said to him the first day they technically started working together.

“Well… no reason you can’t take your girl to a nice restaurant, is there?” April asked.

“Yes, about that…” Castiel began, but April put a finger on his lips to shut him up.

“Wait for me here, cutie pie,” she said. “I’ll just go up to freshen up a little, and then we can be on our way.”

“April…”

She blew him a kiss as the elevator doors closed in front of her.

Castiel stayed in the lobby, feeling like the most miserable person in the world. There it was: his chance to finally talk face to face with April, to clear the air once and for all. And on the other hand, he knew he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do it. April had come all the way there and she was so excited and happy… the guilt would eat him away if he broke up with her now.

Pondering his dilemma, he sat down on one of the couches in the lobby, next to a blonde girl who had her feet up on her bag and her nose deep in a magazine. He was too distracted to notice at first, but suddenly a few far away notes came into his consciousness:

_… and I’m tired, so tired_

_Of running in circles, chasing my tail_

_Of you telling me how I shouldn’t feel_

_I’m entitled to my tears; I’m reclaiming my rage…_

It was the second verse of _Lessons in Repetition_. He looked around, thinking that he might be losing his mind and listening to the song in his head, until he realized that it was coming from the earphones the girl by his side had on. She was blasting it out like she didn’t care if she ended up deaf in a couple of years down the road.

“That’s a good song,” he commented. The girl obviously didn’t hear him, so he repeated it when the song ended. This time he earned a disgruntled look.

“Whatever,” she mumbled, turning her attention back to the magazine. Only then he noticed who was on the cover of it.

Meg’s face was plastered all over it. She was looking at the camera with fierce decision and the smirk on her face reminded Castiel of the way she had smiled before slamming down the guy who had called her a whore at the club. The words “Revenge of the Bride” were right underneath, promoting an exclusive interview with her.

“You like Meg?” he asked the blonde girl.

She scoffed at him and made a gesture with her hand, like Castiel was a mosquito that kept pestering her and wouldn’t go away. Just when he thought she wasn’t going to answer, she mumbled:

“Well, it’s not like she’s the greatest rock goddess in existence or something…”

Castiel figured Meg would have been very pleased to be called a rock goddess.

“She’s great, yes,” he agreed. Only then the girl bothered to look at him. There were thick lines of black underneath her eyes as she analyzed him with skepticism.

“Aren’t you a little too old to be listening to her?”

“Music has no ages,” Castiel said, frowning at the comment. “And Meg is an extraordinary woman.”

“Tell that to my mom. She hates her, says she’s a bad example for me,” the girl chuckled.

“Well, I think she’s made her fair share of mistakes,” Castiel said. “But she’s learnt from them and she’s stronger now. Maybe that’s the example you should follow.”

“Dude, okay, stop it with the life advice,” the girl said, frowning at him. “Also, it’s really creepy that you talk about celebrities like you know them.”

Castiel opened his mouth and then he closed it again. The blonde girl continued not looking at him for a couple of seconds.

“But I did dump an asshole because of her,” she muttered, so low Castiel doubted if he had actually heard her.

A blonde woman appeared around the corner and beckoned the girl.

“Claire, let’s go,” she said. “The taxi’s waiting.”

Claire took her time to stand up and pick up her bag, even though her mother was tapping her foot on the ground, impatiently.

“Hey, you want it?” she asked, handing Castiel the magazine. “I was done with it anyway.”

“Thank you.”

Claire waved goodbye at him and followed her mother outside the hotel.

Castiel looked at the magazine, and then passed the pages until he found Meg’s interview. There was an image of her that occupied an entire page, in which she was posing in a power stance while holding her guitar like a weapon. She was wearing a pair of high heel boots and looking at the camera with parted lips and murder in her eyes. The caption read: “Comeback of the year.” Castiel found it perfectly on point.

The article described Meg’s playful smirk and how she was dressed, which he found incredibly irrelevant. Meg talked about her recovery and her break-up with Bartholomew Harrington in way more polite terms that she had used when describing it to him. The episode with the drugs and the suspicion that he had been the one to release her pictures wasn’t even mentioned. Castiel figured she couldn’t openly talk about that without facing some unpleasant consequences.

Then the important part came, where Meg talked about how happy she was to be writing music again, about how she had been given more control on this album this time around, about how thankful she was to the people who continued to support her, about her writing partner…

Castiel had to read it several times to be sure he was getting it right.

“Castiel is a brilliant guy,” Meg had said. “He’s super hard working and honest, and he has a way to go about music that just made me fall in love with his style the second I heard it. You can tell he’s really passionate about what he does and I’m very lucky to count on him.”

She had never said those things to him, and she might have been just spouting niceness for the interviewer. But he didn’t think so. It was not Meg’s style. When she found something she didn’t like, whether it was a note in the song or excessive salt in her food, she made sure people knew.

So the other possibility was that she’d meant all of it.

The article ended saying _Lessons in Repetition_ was already available on iTunes and that the complete album would be out by the end of the summer, the exact date yet to be announced.

Castiel closed the magazine and for a second, he considered leaving it on the coffee table in front of him. In the end, he made a roll with it and put it in his back pocket. He looked at his watch. April had been gone for twenty minutes already.

After five more minutes had passed, Castiel took out the magazine and started carefully reading the rest of the articles in it. He was glad Claire left it to him, because it was still another half hour until April reappeared.

“Okay, cutie pie!” she called out. “I’m ready!”

“Right, yes,” Castiel said, without taking his eyes off the page. “Did you know Bela Talbot broke three ribs during a concert last week? I hope she’s alright.”

“Who the hell’s Bela Talbot?”

“Just… a singer,” he replied, scanning the rest of the note to get all the details.

“Aren’t you even going to look at me?” April asked. She sounded irritated (and it was a little bit sad, Castiel reckoned, that he was able to pinpoint exactly how much just by tone of her voice) so he immediately put the magazine down.

“Sorry,” he said, lifting his eyes at April. “You look very pretty.”

He hadn’t even really taken in the dress April was wearing, but he knew the best thing to do in those cases was to flatter her until she calmed down. Now, apparently, it was going to take a little bit more than that: April crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Castiel until he understood he was supposed to stand up and accompany her to the door now.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, offering her his arm.

“If you don’t want to go out with me, Castiel, you can just say so,” April said, wryly and a little too loud. Some curious guests around moved their heads in their directions, and Castiel knew right away that if he “said so”, there’d be hell to pay.

“Of course I want to go out with you, April,” he said, lowering his head, humbly. “I just… I’m sorry, I’m a little distracted. I didn’t expect you and…”

“Well, I’m already here,” April remarked. “So maybe try paying attention to me?”

“Absolutely,” Castiel sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. He just didn’t want April to start crying or screaming. It was obvious she was in a very foul mood despite her previous cheerfulness, and if he said the wrong thing, there was going to be a very long and extremely tiresome fight. He didn’t think he could deal with that right now.

His placating attitude seemed to work, because April finally grabbed his arm with a little huff.

“Come on, cutie pie,” she said, in a whisper that sounded more menacing than endearing. “Let’s have some dinner.”

Castiel hadn’t even decided where he was taking her, and he didn’t dare look at his cellphone for an address or recommendation because April might think he was trying to avoid her. Which, when he thought about it, was exactly what he would like to do, until she’d calm down a little bit. He told the name of a restaurant from where he and Meg had ordered food a couple of times to the taxi driver, but April didn’t seem convinced.

“Indian, Castiel?” she asked. “You know I don’t tolerate spicy food very well.”

“You’re right, sorry,” Castiel said, automatically. He wondered if April could distinguish a sincere apology from a rushed one. “Do you want anything special or…?”

“Actually, I read about this great place,” April said after a moment. “Very elegant, very romantic atmosphere before I got here…”

“Lady, why didn’t you just suggest that to your boyfriend in the first place?” the driver intervened.

April whimpered, offended, but Castiel couldn’t help but to think he was a little right. He also knew that it was because April didn’t believe in asking things directly. April didn’t believe in directness at all, in fact.

“Alright,” he said, leaning back in the seat and assuming once and for all he was going to have no control over that night and that the best he could do was hope that it ended quickly. “Let’s go where you say.”

The restaurant was only a few minutes away, and the entire time April talked about the trip while Castiel nodded and tried to memorize what she said in case there was an interrogatory later.

“And this air steward kept flirting with me,” she said. “He was smiling and asking me what did I need every five minutes…”

“I believe that’s part of their job requirement, April,” Castiel replied absentmindedly. He had learnt to take April’s stories about guys flirting with her with a pinch of salt. Not because he thought they were untrue, but April had a certain propensity to exaggerate and overreact sometimes.

“Giving me his number wasn’t part of the job requirement,” April pointed out, rolling her eyes. “He said he was staying in LA for the weekend and that I should totally give him a call. As if.”

“And how long are you staying?” Castiel asked, taking his eyes away from the window. By the way April narrowed her eyes, he realized that had been the wrong thing to ask, but she didn’t go off at him. Luckily.

“I got Monday off, asked Hester to cover for me,” she said. “Aren’t you mad?”

“Mad about what?”

“The air steward making indecent proposals to me?” she explained, like it was obvious and Castiel was just being obtuse on purpose.

“Oh, _that_ ,” Castiel shrugged. “Well, I can’t control how other people behave around you. And while it was inappropriate, I know you, April. If he upset you, I’m sure you informed him of it loud and clear.”

The taxi driver let out a suffocated sound, like he’d just bit back a chuckle. April clenched her jaw and didn’t say anything. It was odd, Castiel half expected a full account on how she had shouted at him and threatened to make him lose his job. Perhaps that confirmed that the flirting hadn’t been as serious, if it had existed at all. Why she felt the need to make up such stories was beyond Castiel.

“We’re here,” the driver announced parking in front of the restaurant. “Good luck,” he added when Castiel leaned next to the window to pay him.

He was probably going to need it.

The restaurant was almost full, but they still managed to get a table in a quiet corner. April ordered everything without butter or condiments and asked water to drink. Castiel just ordered a steak, medium rare.

“Are you still eating all that red meat?” April scolded him as soon as the waitress left.

“I’m hungry,” Castiel shrugged.

“I know that. What I’m trying to say is that you’ve put on some weight, cutie pie,” April said. “Maybe you should go for a healthier option.”

“We’ve already ordered.”

“We can change the order…” she said, raising her hand to beckon the waitress.

“April,” Castiel grabbed her hand to stop her. “I want the steak.”

“Yes, miss?” asked the waitress, standing next their table, notepad in hand.

“Yes, we would like to…”

“Nothing!” Castiel interrupted her. “We’re fine.”

The waitress shrugged, probably deciding it was none of her business, and walked away. April was frowning at Castiel.

“That was rude.”

“It was rude to try to change my meal when I told you I didn’t want to,” Castiel said. His face had got heated and he was having trouble not raising his voice, but he forced himself to remain calm.

“Well, I’m sorry, I just want to make sure you’re making smarter choices,” April said, with a shrug. “Is that so bad on my part?”

They clearly weren’t talking about the steak anymore. Castiel sighed and looked up at April directly.

“Why are you really here?” he asked. He wasn’t expecting an honest answer, not even a plausible one, but April surprised him by actually acknowledging what bothered her for once.

“Okay, fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been reading and listening to the interviews of this Meg woman you’re working with because I wanted to know what was so great about this gig you got that you wouldn’t come home. She praises you to heavens every chance she gets, magazines are spreading the rumors you two are dating. And that song you wrote together? I just… well, I got a little bit jealous. Sue me.”

Castiel looked at her, and suddenly the flirty made-up air steward made sense.

“April, you know I would never…” he began, but then he bit his tongue.

It hadn’t even been a week since he had admitted to Meg out loud how he felt about her. He had been planning ways to break-up with April (again) ever since, but now that he actually had her in front of him he was too much of a coward to actually say anything. He didn’t want to lie to her, of course, but the truth was a little too delicate for April to understand.

“There’s nothing going on between Meg and me,” he said, and at least with that he was being sincere. “We’re friends. Partners. I enjoy working with her, but… she’s not… you know. We’re not involved or anything.”

April analyzed his face for a long moment, and she seemed to like what she found in it, because she nodded.

“Well, I’m so glad to hear that, cutie pie…”

“That said,” Castiel interrupted her, taking a deep breath. “I don’t think our relationship can continue the way it is now.”

“You’re absolutely right,” April said, again shocking Castiel beyond words. But then she had to go on and add: “That’s why I’m so anxious for you to come home so we can discuss this at length. Right now let’s just enjoy our dinner, okay?”

The steak caused Castiel a mild indigestion.

 

* * *

 

Meg walked out of the kitchen to find Castiel lying face down on the carpet. She looked at the time on her cellphone. It was barely nine o’clock.

“You’re home early,” she commented.

Castiel only groaned in reply.

Meg considered leaving him alone, but he looked so tired and defeated that she just couldn’t walk away. She didn’t know what good could her presence do, but she still left her can of soda on the piano and lied down next to him.

“Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad,” she said. Castiel didn’t react, so she moved closer to him until her mouth was practically on his ear and muttered ever gently: “Cutie pie…”

Castiel sat up as fast as if someone had shoved a firecracker up his ass.

“Don’t,” he begged, as Meg rolled on her back laughing. “Please, don’t ever do that again.”

“Alright, alright,” Meg said, suffocating her last chuckle. “I’m sorry.”

Castiel lay back with a sigh. They stayed in silence for several seconds, staring at the ceiling.

“Ash and the guys left early,” Castiel commented, after a while.

“Yeah, I wasn’t really feeling it,” Meg replied.

A short pause.

“Did you know Bela Talbot broke her ribs?”

“Oh, no, I love her! What happened?”

“She fell during one of her concerts.”

“Damn. I should get Jo to tweet her to get better soon.”

They were both deflecting epically, and she wondered who’d be the first to bring up what was bothering them. Of course, what was bothering her was ridiculous: “Hey, I know I told you I wasn’t looking for a relationship and that we should not bring it up again, but it really bothered me that your girlfriend, who you said things weren’t clear with, showed up unannounced and stole you away like she has the complete right to do.” Even in her head it sounded pathetic.

“How did you do it?” Castiel asked, suddenly. “How did you just stand up and left everything behind to come here?”

“Well, there wasn’t much to leave behind to begin with,” Meg said, with a shrug. “There was college, but I never was much of a student. And there was my dad, but he always supported whatever I wanted to do. ‘ _Don’t look back, Meggy,’_ he used to tell me. ‘ _You’re not going that way.’_ ”

She chuckled, but it sounded forced, and Castiel could obviously tell that wasn’t an easy conversation topic. She had talked long and hard about it with Benny, and reached the conclusion that her father’s passing had had some influence on her drug habit. Or better put, the intensification of her drug habit.

But that wasn’t the answer Castiel was looking for.

“Lucifer and Lilith played a lot of underground circuits,” she kept telling him. “They had a modest fame, and I’d heard they were looking for a guitarist. So I took my second-hand Strat that was basically held together by duck-tape because I couldn’t afford a new guitar, and I crashed Luc and Lilith’s dressing room. I played some tunes for them, and they were impressed, so they asked me to come along with them for the rest of the tour. I was like, _‘Cool, when are you leaving?’_ and they said: _‘Tomorrow morning.’_ So I didn’t really had time to think about it and chicken out.”

“Would you do it again?” Castiel asked.

“I don’t see the point of thinking about that,” Meg said. “I did what I did, and I can’t take any of it back.”

“So you have no regrets?”

“Oh, no, I have a few,” she replied, shaking her head. “Now I’m older and wiser and all that jazz, I know I should have waited another year or two before trying to join a band. I was practically a kid when we became big, and I handled it poorly. Also, I should have gone with what my gut said and not trusted that smarmy dick of Crowley from Crossroads Records. I mean, I never imagined he would have the power to actually kick me out of my own band…”

“Is that what happened?”

Meg bit her tongue. If Sam could have heard her, he would be screaming at her to shut the hell up and reminding her of the NDAs involved.

“No, leaving Satan’s Brides was a very personal decision,” she said, touching her nose at the same time to indicate she was lying. Castiel nodded.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he guaranteed.

They stayed quiet for another minute. Meg wondered how would the ceiling look if they painted it white.

“You ever thought about dying?” she asked. It was a strange question for a moment like that, but her mind wondered down the most unpredictable paths.

“I worked at a funeral home,” Castiel said. “The thought inevitably crosses your mind. You?”

“I’ve thought about faking my death,” she replied. “You know, like Elvis. Make everyone believe I’ve passed from an overdose; start again in a small town where nobody knows my name.”

“And why didn’t you?” Castiel asked. He wasn’t asking why she hadn’t faked her death, obviously. But why hadn’t she retired from the music business she hated so much when she had the chance.

“I missed my window of opportunity at the clinic,” Meg replied, understanding the question perfectly. “Besides, I don’t know what else to do. This is what I’m good at. And I love it, and I want to keep doing it. You know what I mean?”

Castiel nodded. If he didn’t feel comfortable talking about what was bothering her after that, Meg had really run out of ideas.

“April is still convinced I’m going back home after I’m done with the album,” he explained, after a pause.

“And you’re not?”

“No… yes. I don’t know,” Castiel covered his eyes with his hands and huffed in frustration. “I want to stay here,” he confessed. “I like working with you, I like writing music that actually helps people. It’s like you said, it’s the only thing I can picture myself doing. But if I tell her that, then it means our relationship is over.”

“Does she have nudes of you?”

“No, I… don’t think so?” he said, frowning at her.

“Then I say, dump her ass,” Meg shrugged. She tried to play it as cool as possible so Castiel couldn’t tell she had a personal interest in seeing April gone from his life.

“It’s not that simple…”

“Yes, it is,” Meg insisted. “Cas, you need to do what makes _you_ happy. You can’t go living your life trying to please someone else, ‘cause that will only make you miserable. You want to stay; then stay. If she wants the relationship to continue, she has to respect that this is important to you and work around it. Otherwise… you’re just postponing the inevitable divorce ten years from now when you realize you’ve been holding a grudge against her for making you quit your chance.”

“Sounds dramatic,” he pointed out. But he seemed to be lost deep in thought for a long while. Afterwards, he smiled shyly. “Thank you, Meg.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” she said, shrugging. “Deliver cheesy, clichéd life advice when you’re in the middle of a self-doubt attack.”

Castiel chuckled. He really did seemed a lot more relaxed when he did that. There were small crinkles around his eyes instead of the usual furrow between his eyebrows that make him look much older than his…

“Wait, how old are you?”

“Twenty seven.”

“You’re a year younger than me? Get out of here!” she exclaimed, punching him in the shoulder like he had done something to personally offend her. Castiel was probably not quite getting the joke, but he laughed anyway.

“I turn twenty eight in October,” he offered.

“That is not the point!” Meg continued, poking him in the arm and the neck to annoy him.

“Okay, that’s… Stop it!”

Of course, that only encouraged Meg to keep going until he grabbed both her wrists and tried to get her to keep her arms still. Meg wriggled and tried to get away, laughing at the irritation on Castiel’s face. Then she realized he was practically on top of her and they were so close she could see the cracks in his chapped lips, and the laughter died out.

Castiel realized the same thing, because he let go of her quickly and sat up.

“Sorry,” he said, his face turning red. “I, uh…”

“Yeah,” Meg said, sitting up as well. “I’m gonna… I was going to watch a movie. Wanna join me?”

That didn’t make things any less awkward, but she really wasn’t sure what else to say. She didn’t want Castiel to leave her alone just yet, and she had the feeling he didn’t want to be alone either. He was probably thinking the same thing, because after a moment he said:

“Yes, of course. Let’s do that.”


	10. Closed Doors

Luckily for Castiel, Sunday was the last day of their two weeks of grace, so he had a perfect excuse to stay at Silverbell and cram as much work as they could do. April said she understood (she had actually been surprisingly comprehensive during the entire weekend) and decided she would go shopping through the city until she mashed up her credit cards.

“But I’ll still see you at dinner, won’t I, cutie pie?”

“Yes, of course,” Castiel said, rubbing his right temple to relief his growing headache. “I’ll… we have lots to talk about, April.”

“I bet we do!” April said, sounding too cheerful for Castiel’s taste.

He didn’t know how else to drop the hint that he wanted to break up, and this would be his last chance to do it before she went back to Illinois. That’s why he had insisted they dined at her hotel. He was dreading the minute he found himself alone with April, but then again, it wasn’t like the presence of other people ever stopped her from throwing a fit.

“You okay?” Meg asked him the moment he turned towards the piano.

“Yeah, I’m… let’s just…”

He gestured at the scores and Meg must have understood he didn’t want to talk about it, because she didn’t insist.

Unfortunately for Castiel, he couldn’t lose himself in his job as much as he would’ve liked. They only had to finish polishing a couple of songs and do some arrangements for Garth and Kevin’s parts. They were done soon, so he had plenty of time to worry and go out of his mind while they waited for Ash.

“Told you, we could have watched another movie last night,” Meg pointed out. “You didn’t have to go to bed that early.”

Castiel wanted to argue that he needed some mental preparation for what he was about to tell April, but there was simply no amount of meditation and breathing exercises that would help him out.

Ash finally arrived at noon (Castiel wondered why he was never there before that hour, and Meg explained he had sleeping patterns similar to hers, which was to say, none at all) and worked them out until everyone was ready to tie him up to a chair and leave him in the dark for a day or two. Luckily for him, Jo arrived and wanted to hear the new recordings, so they were forced to let him live and gather up on the living room with his laptop, which so far contained the only copy of Meg Master’s yet unreleased album.

“That sounds incredibly pretentious,” Meg commented.

“Well, have you come up with a name?”

Meg opened her mouth, closed it again, and turned to look at Castiel.

“We… we’ll figure something out.”

“Today we finished recording this one, which means we have nine ready and three to go,” Ash said as he pressed the buttons on his laptop.

A very aggressive, very fast riff began playing in the living room. Castiel still couldn’t believe Meg had been able to play like that. He could have sworn he saw smoke coming out of her fingers while she recorded it, and then she began singing like her hands were actually on fire.

_Look at these pillars of salt_

_You’re gonna end up like one if you dare to stop_

_These hills will swallow you up and spit you out_

_Soon you’ll find you lost yourself in the lights_

_Of this goddamned tinsel town…_

The song was about a famous actress running away from Hollywood after faking her death. It started as a private joke, and had become one of the most explosive tracks in the album.

“This is very good, guys,” Jo said, smiling approvingly as she gently bobbed her head up and down. “You did it. You really did it.”

“Yeah, and it only took a couple of months of agonizing work,” Meg commented.

Castiel didn’t miss the glance she threw at him. She was obviously joking to try and cheer him up, and he forced a chuckle for her benefit. However, the pit in his stomach prevented it from sounding remotely authentic.

“We finished this one this morning,” he said, showing Jo the scores.

“That means you only have to write two more,” Jo said. “Have you got around doing that?”

“Yes, but…” Castiel and Meg answered in unison, and then looked at each other, blinking.

“You’ve been writing a song you haven’t showed me?” Meg asked.

“It’s a… I just want to… tweak it a little more,” Castiel said, hoping his lie wasn’t that obvious. “What about you? What have you been writing?”

“Well, it’s not so much writing, as… rewriting,” Meg replied, with a shrug that didn’t fool Castiel. “I’ve been fixing the _Star-eyed Girl_ lyrics. I… wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Oh. Okay, I’m… I’m very surprised,” Castiel replied, tilting his head.

“I changed it to a boy,” she added. It was a rare opportunity for Castiel to poke her, and he was not about to let it pass.

“What happened to _‘it’s the twenty-first century’_?”

“Well, I wasn’t really feeling it,” Meg replied, raising her chin defiantly. “You’ll get it when you listen to it.”

Castiel smirked back at her. He considered telling her how happy he was that he reconsidered the song, and that he knew she’d done a great thing with it… but then his eyes met hers, all brown and sparkling, and the words were scattered on his mind.

Someone cleared his throat and pulled them back to reality.

“So tomorrow Dean’s going to pick you up at ten thirty,” Jo announced. “We are going to start the filming of the _Lessons_ video. Would you like to come, Cas?”

“Oh, I don’t…” Castiel began, but Meg cut him off.

“Come on, Clarence, is going to be fun!” she said, bumping her shoulder against his. “Have you ever been to a movie studio? There’s going to be cameras and everything.”

Castiel was about to refuse again with some sort of excuse, but then he figured that whatever happened after that night, he was going to need the distraction.

“Okay, why not?”

“Yay!” Meg said, lifting her hand for Castiel to give her a high five.

“I guess that’s all,” Jo concluded. “See you guys tomorrow.”

The words hadn’t even finished leaving her mouth when Castiel’s phone rang. It was a message from April asking him if he was on his way. The timing was eerie. There was nothing in the world that Castiel could have wanted more than staying at home (and seriously, he needed to stop thinking of Silverbell as his “home”) and not doing anything confrontational, but that was not in the cards for him.

He took a shower that was too long for the quick one that he had said he’d take, and spent a good twenty minutes choosing his clothes. In the end, he decided to wear the creased shirt he had taken off before going into the bathroom. If he was too groomed when he walked into that hotel room, April would probably get the wrong impression.

Meg was on the couch with her computer on her lap and her earphones on her head when he came down.

“Hey,” she greeted him, immediately pausing whatever it was that she was watching. “So…”

“So… this is it,” Castiel said, swallowing. “I’m going to do it. I’ll tell her I’m not coming back to Illinois and… well, I expect whatever follows will be a long conversation.”

Meg looked at him with worry in her expression. Or at least Castiel thought it was; he had never seen worried, after all. But she was frowning and her lips had become a tight line, like she was biting back something she wanted to tell him.

“Good luck,” she said, in the end.

“Thanks,” he sighed, as he headed for the door. His knees felt a little weak, but not in a good way. More like they would give in at any moment and he would ended up passed out on the floor.

“Cas,” Meg called him when he already had a foot outside. “If you need anything… call Dean, he can handle violent situations way better than anyone I know.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Castiel said, trying to laugh. Because Meg was obviously joking, right?

Still, when he hopped into the taxi he made sure Dean’s number was on speed dial.

“Mrs. Kelly is waiting for me,” he informed to the receptionist at the hotel’s front desk. He looked for his name in the list, and then nodded at him. Castiel didn’t like his smile. He obviously thought something sordid was about to happen.

And well, if he had seen April’s room, he probably would have guessed right.

“Hey, cutie pie,” she greeted him when he knocked. “So happy to see you.”

She tried grabbing him by the lapels and pulling him in for a kiss, but Castiel stepped out right out of her reach.

“April…”

“Of course, you must be hungry,” she said, not at all taken aback by his rejection. “Come on in, everything is ready!”

She turned around, with her pink dress twirling seductively between her legs. Castiel swallowed loudly. He remembered that dress from what he called “the good times”, those times when doubt and resentment hadn’t been installed between them. He hesitated on the doorway for a long time, watching April move around the room. There was food elegantly served in a table next to the window, so they could dine while watching the skyline. There were candles (were guests allowed to light them in their rooms? Wasn’t that a fire hazard?) and a bottle of champagne that April promptly opened and poured in two glasses.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” she beckoned him.

Castiel finally stepped inside the room.

“Close the door,” April reminded him, frowning like she would at a puppy dog who refused to heed her orders. “What’s got into you tonight?”

There was no easy answer to that. Castiel obeyed, with rigid muscles and a sudden tension in his neck, but the unpleasant sensations actually helped his decisions. That wasn’t how you were supposed to feel when walking into a room with someone you loved, or even liked. You weren’t supposed to feel scared, or half-expecting them to start shouting at you. You were supposed to feel happy, excited, butterflies in the stomach instead of the ugly knot he had.

He was supposed to feel like he felt when he was around Meg.

April put a glass in her hand, still with a cheery smile, but Castiel could see how she was forcing it to stay there.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be tired from working so hard, huh? But now you have to relax. This night is about me and you.” She raised her glass. “To a new beginning!”

Castiel didn’t want to leave her waiting, but he felt like he couldn’t honestly toast to that.

“April…” he began.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” April said, turning her back on him like she hadn’t seen anything wrong with him at all. She removed the food dome to reveal a fish sitting in the plate. “I was going to ask for the red meat you so much like,” she added, with a slight eye roll. “But in the end, I told myself maybe this is the time when I can help you start eating better, no?”

The irritation at her passive-aggressiveness added to the tension in Castiel’s neck. Now he could feel it all across his shoulder blades.

“April…” he tried saying again.

“Or, you know, if you want, we could totally skip dinner,” she said, putting her glass down and walking towards Castiel with her lips parted and a wink. “I’ve bought some really pretty things I want to show you…”

“April, will you just listen to me?” Castiel practically shouted. April froze, her eyes wide open, as if she couldn’t believe the tone he had employed with her. Castiel took a deep breath. He had promised himself he would remain calm, but it obviously wasn’t going to be that simple. “I have something to tell you,” he added, in a quieter voice.

“Okay, but there’s no need to use that tone…” April scolded him.

“April, please,” Castiel begged. “Just sit down so we can talk.”

“Okay, cutie pie,” April said, smiling again, but it was a pale imitation of the welcoming smile she had before. She sat on the chair next to the table, and Castiel sat on the bed. Face to face. Like he had promised they would be when they talked.

“I’m staying here,” he said. Quick and to the point, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

“What?” April’s face went from welcoming and inviting to furious. Her smile became a grimace, and her fingers held onto the glass a little too tight.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” Castiel continued. “And this is the best for…”

“No!” April interrupted him. “Don’t tell me this is the best for us!”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Castiel said. “I was going to say this is the best for me. I have a job I like, doing what I love. April, this has been my dream for as long as you’ve known me.”

“But I thought maybe your dreams had changed!” she argued. “I thought maybe you had a new one that involved me and you together, like a family!”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said, trying to keep his expression neutral.

April gulped down her champagne. “I’m not moving here with you,” she said.

“I don’t expect you to.”

“So what, you’re breaking up with me?” she asked. “After I came all the way here, after all I did for you?”

And there it was, the guilt. Castiel took a deep breath.

“I didn’t ask you to do that for me, April,” he said. “You did that on your own accord.”

A pair of red stains appeared on April’s cheeks. She was beginning to get really angry, and Castiel calculated it would only take another minute before she started shouting abuse at him.

“Is this because of _her_?” April shouted. “Is this because of that _whore_?”

“No, this is because of me,” Castiel said, and at least he was being partially sincere. “And Meg is my friend, so please don’t talk about her like that.”

“I’ve seen her pictures!” April shouted, and she didn’t have to say what pictures she meant. “She’s nothing but a slut! Look what she’s doing: she’s taking you away from me.”

“Meg has nothing to do with this,” Castiel replied, although he already knew that April wouldn’t believe him. “I made this decision on my own!”

“And now you’re yelling at me!” April cried, completely ignoring the fact that she was the one who had begun screaming in the first place. “Did you sleep with her?”

“No,” Castiel sighed, tiredly.

“I don’t believe you!”

“You can believe whatever you want, April,” Castiel replied. “It doesn’t change what I’m telling you. I’m not coming back to Illinois, and I don’t think this relationship can continue.”

And that was when April finished losing her cool. She shouted at Castiel that he was nothing but a selfish, ungrateful jerk, that she had done _so many things_ for him, that he was a coward and he had probably slept with Meg, despite what he was saying, and that it didn’t matter, because she never really loved him.

“If you never did, then why you insisted in staying with me?” Castiel asked, in a whisper. He had been holding back a lot of replies, squeezing his own knees and reminding himself to breath, not letting his anger get the better of him.

“You’re a cynical asshole!” was April’s only reply.

She went on: that he was going to kill his mother with his decision, he was going to disappoint everyone in his family, in fact. He was going to lose this job for sure, and he was going to end up penniless and miserable, and she wouldn’t be there waiting for him when she returned, oh, no, because she was not going to marry some broke loser like Castiel was destined to be.

In between accusations and insults, she tried to convince Castiel she was only saying it because she cared, that she hadn’t meant that about not loving him, that he belonged with her and that they could work through this. All Castiel had to do was come home with her, let her take care of him, let her fix things between them. And when that received nothing but a slight shake of the head, she went back to screaming at him what a scumbag he was and how unhappy he would be his whole life without her, because nobody could love him like she did.

It had been a time in his life when Castiel had really believed that. Now he realized he never really knew April, like she had been nothing but a blur at the other side of a glass all through their relationship, where he was never certain what she wanted, what she was after or what she’d do next. But now that they had spent some time apart, the mist in the glass had vanished, and he could see her clearly. He could see through her.

Castiel kept looking at the carpet, trying to zone out of April’s ramblings. At some point, he looked at the clock, and realized they had been “talking” for three hours straight.

“And you know what else?” April said, who at this point was obviously just trying to provoke him. Her entire make up was leaking and her face was wet with rage tears. “You know what else?! I did sleep with Inias! And he was a better fuck that you ever could have been!”

Castiel looked at her, almost amused at the fact she didn’t get the irony of accusing him to sleep with someone else, at the same time she confessed to doing exactly that. He supposed he should have felt hurt about it. But there was only a sensation of relief: after all those years living with the Schrödinger Cheater, it actually felt great to finally know the truth.

“I think we’re done here,” he sighed, standing up.

“Don’t you dare walk out that door!” April shouted. “Castiel, don’t you dare!”

Castiel calmly walked towards it. He couldn’t believe how easy it was: he would close the door behind him and then it’d be all over.

“Castiel!” April shouted one more time.

Castiel put his hand on the doorknob.

Something heavy hit him square on the shoulder, making him stumble and crash his face on the door. When he looked down, scandalized, he realized April had thrown her suitcase at him. The pain wasn’t as bad as the surprise he felt. He never would have guessed she would get that far.

April looked slightly embarrassed. “No, Cas,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, I just…”

“Goodbye, April,” Castiel groaned.

He closed the door behind him. He stayed on the hallway just long enough to hear more things crashing on the spot where he had been standing a second before.

 

* * *

 

For the first hour he was gone, Meg tried not to think about it. She really did. It was none of her business, after all. It was the business of someone she knew, someone she called a friend even. A friend that had looked utterly crushed and helpless the day before after talking to his girlfriend. A friend that obviously panicked at the idea of spending time alone with her. A friend that had been tensed and anxious all day long knowing he would have to go there and break up with her.

But it was none of _her_ business, after all. She should not care at all.

“Quick question: can I, completely out of the blue, hire a P. E. to record a conversation for me? A conversation that’s probably going on like, right now?”

Jo sighed on the other side of the phone. One would think that at this point in their friendship she knew Meg would call with the most random questions at the most inconvenient hours, but she still sounded a little exasperated whenever it happened.

“Meg, go to sleep,” she ordered her. “You have a shooting tomorrow, and Pamela will kill you if you show up all baggy-eyed.”

“They can remove that with CGI,” Meg said. “Where are we on the P. E.? Hello?”

Jo had hung up on her. Frustrated, but not beaten, Meg dialed Benny’s number. He was obligated to answer her calls and couldn’t just get rid of her with the excuse of work, because she was his job.

“Sistah’, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” Benny said, after she finished letting out an avalanche of words explaining the situation. She was pretty sure she had woken Benny up and that his sleepy brain hadn’t registered half of them, but she still needed to vent.

“I’m not, not at all,” Meg assured him. “You should have seen him. He had this resigned look, like a soldier going out to war knowing he’s going to get killed…”

“Meg, please,” Benny yawn. “Leave the metaphors for your lyrics. What’s really bothering you?”

She hated when he asked that question, because now she needed to stop and actually think why it was such a big deal to her.

“It bothers me that he is going through a bad time,” Meg began, after a minute. “It bothers me that his girlfriend is probably making him feel shitty about his choices and I can’t be there to support him. It bothers me… that I care about him. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to be this person I work with once and nothing more, you know?”

“Well, we can’t always choose when or who we start caring about,” Benny said, with that calmed, wise tone of voice that reminded Meg a little bit of Yoda. “Listen, you can’t help him deal with his girlfriend, because that is his problem, as you said. But you can be there for him when he comes back. Just listen to him, ask him if he needs anything…”

“And what if he does?” Meg asked. That was an entire new thing to panic about: she wasn’t good at taking care of people. What if she blew it? What if she said something insensitive or mean? It wouldn’t be the first time that her good intentions led to confusion and chaos.

“Just make him some tea, Meg,” Benny suggested. “That always helps.”

He yawned again, and Meg realized she was abusing his patience, as usual.

“Thank you, Benny.”

“Whatever you need,” Benny mumbled. A deep, long snore followed immediately. Meg ended the call and went to the kitchen.

The first three cups of tea were thrown away because she deemed them undrinkable (then again, Meg had never been an expert when it came to tea). The next three got cold waiting for Castiel to arrive. Meg tapped her fingers against the kitchen counter, trying and failing to distract herself with something else. By two thirty in the morning, she had already read and discarded all the magazines and books in the house, sat on the piano only to decide she should stick with the guitar, and started and stopped at least four different movies.

By three, she was bouncing on the walls, going out of her mind, wondering if she should call Castiel. It couldn’t have been that long, could it? Maybe he’d finished with April hours ago and had some sort of accident on the way back. It wouldn’t be weird for it to be drunk drivers on the streets on a Friday night. Meg remembered it was Sunday, and ended up drinking the tea herself to see if it helped assuage her paranoia. It didn’t.

At around four in the morning, she heard the unmistakable shriek of the gate opening. She stood by the window, trying to catch a glimpse of him. Castiel was walking towards the mansion with slumped shoulders and his hair in complete disarray. Meg ran to the couch and pretended she hadn’t been waiting for him until Castiel walked in through the door with a groan.

“Hey, how it went?”

Okay, that had not been smooth at all.

Castiel halted, like he didn’t remember who she was or why she was there, and then flailed down on the couch next to her.

“It was… well, it was long,” he said. He sounded absent, like he was still processing what had just happened.

“Tea?” Meg offered, and then realized she had an empty cup in her hands. “I mean, I can make you some more…”

“It’s fine,” Castiel said. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the void concentrated in the wall in front of them.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” Meg asked, rubbing her hands nervously. “’Cause I can just go upstairs…”

“No,” Castiel muttered. “No, I don’t want you to go.”

It was obvious he wanted to tell her what had happened, but he didn’t know where to begin. So Meg just sat by his side, taking in the tiredness in his eyes and the tense rictus in his lips, and waited.

So he told her. He told her everything: about the fight, about how the things April said about him and about the Meg, and ultimately, the Inias confession.

 “Oh, Cas,” Meg said, putting a hand on his shoulder. He flinched and moved away. “Sorry…”

“It’s fine,” he said, rubbing the spot. “It’s just… well, she threw her suitcase at me and it hit me there,” he explained.

Finally, something Meg could actually help with. She flew to kitchen and came back to Castiel frowning at her, confused.

“Frozen beans,” she said, showing it to him. “It’ll help with the pain.”

He still remained disconcerted another moment before he understood what she was waiting for. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it down to reveal his skin, covered in an ugly stain of violet.

“Shit,” Meg muttered, sitting by his side and gently pressing the pack against it. Castiel hissed a little, but then he closed his eyes, welcoming the relieving coolness. “Well, at least you can officially say you got rid of your jerk girlfriend,” she commented.

“Don’t be like that,” Castiel muttered. “April is not…”

“Dude, if Bart had thrown something at me and left me with this thing after telling me he cheated on me, Sam would’ve totally helped me sue his ass,” Meg declared. “No one has the right to treat you like that.”

She immediately thought back at all the times she had caused Castiel to jump and hit himself and how she had laughed afterwards, and felt guilty enough to shut her mouth. Maybe Benny had a point and she needed to be a little less of a bully.

Castiel wasn’t thinking the same thing, because he simply muttered: “Thank you.”

“So it’s over, right?” Meg asked. She didn’t know why it mattered so much to her, but it somehow did. “It’s really, really over.”

“I think so,” Castiel nodded. “I mean, it won’t be over until she goes back to Pontiac and tells on me to my mother, but her, I can handle. I think.”

“Good,” Meg nodded. “That’s great.”

Castiel turned his head and put his hand over the frozen beans pack, barely gracing Meg’s fingers when doing so.

“Your hands must be getting cold…”

“Cas, you’re the one who just got a suitcase thrown at him,” she pointed out. “You’re allowed to not be considerate to everyone else for five minutes.”

Castiel looked at her, and Meg realized she could make out all the shades of blue in his eyes. Once again, she wondered when they had started playing this game of “Let’s see how close we can get to each other’s face without kissing.” Maybe not for the first time, she imagined what it would feel like to just close the small gap between them and… and he had just a rough break up with his girlfriend and she had already turned him down before. She let go of the pack.

“We should go to sleep,” she blurted out, awkwardly.

“Yeah, I really need to do that,” he agreed, standing up. Meg watched him drag his feet towards the stairs and mentally calculated the amount of hours they had left before Dean and Jo showed up and passive-aggressively read them the definition of punctuality from the dictionary.

“Hey, if you want to stay in bed tomorrow and not go to the shooting…”

“No, it’s fine,” he assured. “I need something to keep my mind distracted.”

“Okay,” she said. Castiel resumed his walking towards the stairs, but she still felt like she needed to add something else. “Hey. I’m glad you stayed.”

She thought he hadn’t heard her, but then he turned towards her. For the first time in the night (maybe for the first time in the day), Castiel smiled. Just a shy, tiny smile, but it still had the power to make Meg shivered when their eyes met.

“Me too.”

 

* * *

 

April called him at seven in the morning.

“I’m at the airport,” she informed him after Castiel grunted a “Hello?” “I’m heading home.”

“Okay,” Castiel said. He didn’t know why she was giving him that information. Did she expect him to make a daring dash towards where she was? Cut all the passengers in line and catch her just before she boarded the plane, like in the movies?

“I’m sorry things got so out of hand last night, Cas,” she continued. “I know you might not believe me, but I do wish you the best.”

Castiel thought of something to say, but his brain was physically and emotionally exhausted, so the only thing that came to his lips was: “Goodbye, April.”

She hung up.

Castiel wasn’t able to go back to sleep. He laid in the bed, watching the sunrise over the impeccable garden outside until Meg knocked on his door.


	11. Open Windows

Someone touched him on the hurt shoulder and Castiel jolted awake.

“Sorry, dude,” Dean said, raising his arm apologetically. “I just figured you’d get a contracture if you fell asleep like that.”

Castiel blinked a couple of times, and it took his exhausted brain a couple of minutes to figure out where they were.

Balthazar had promised him to take him to the movie studio when they started filming, but of course, that had never happened. He was startled by the amount of people running around: assistant directors, stylist, camera operators…

Meg had been hushed away by Pamela the moment they set foot in the studio. Castiel had brought along his sheets and some pencils and found himself a quiet place where to finish the song he was trying to write for Meg. Not for Meg, specifically. All the songs he’d written lately were for Meg, of course, but that one in particular was maybe a little bit more personal… and maybe he just shouldn’t show it to her. Maybe he should write something about Grandpa Lucifer and be done with everything.

The corner he had chosen, however, was too quiet, or maybe he had been way too tired, because he remembered blacking out over the notes he was trying to put down and then Dean shaking him gently.

“You look like crap,” the bodyguard told him. “You want me to run and get you a coffee?”

“No, it’s… thank you, but no,” Castiel said, rubbing his temples. “They started filming yet?”

The enormous set was decorated to look like a luxurious apartment, with a bedroom, a kitchen and a living room included. The “windows” were covered in green so they could digitally add the city skyline later. There was a man with dark hair and a leather jacket talking with the director and Jo.

“That’s Meg’s fake boyfriend for the day,” Dean explained. “His name is Gadreel.”

“What kind of name is that?” Castiel asked.

“An artistic one, apparently,” Dean replied. “He’s good looking, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if Meg decided to take him home as a souvenir, if you know what I mean.”

Castiel had a pretty clear idea what he meant, and he didn’t like the way his stomach sank at the idea.

“She wouldn’t do that,” he protested, but then he realized it was very likely that Dean had seen it happened before. “Does she… do that a lot?”

“How do you think she got her last actor?” Dean shrugged.

Castiel decided this Gadreel person looked sketchy and arrogant as hell. He was thinking maybe he should slip in Meg’s dressing room to tell her just that, but he was still considering it when Meg emerged from somewhere to the left, wearing a white robe. She joined the conversation, and a moment later, she and Gadreel walked into the apartment.

“This is gonna be good,” Dean commented, rubbing his hands. “Jo said they wanted to make it sexy at first to contrast with the violence of the song later.”

“Well, I don’t see how that is going to work,” Castiel commented, a little more to himself than to Dean. “She’s just there with that old robe and…”

Meg took it off to reveal a see through black nightgown with red embroidery strategically placed over her breasts. And yes, Meg was partial to putting on actual clothes when she knew she wasn’t going to leave the house, so Castiel had caught glimpses of her body now and then, but somehow this was different because there were at least twenty-five other people looking at her. And not only that, the Gadreel guy was taking off his shirt to reveal some very hard-worked abs. Castiel looked down at his own belly and found out with a bit of desperation that April had been right to say he was putting on a little weight.

Not that he should care. What difference would it make? It should not matter at all.

He still felt strangely uncomfortable as he had to spend the entire afternoon watching Meg make out and hug the actor, and then fake-fight with him, and then make out with him again on the bed, while the both of them wore very little clothes. By the end of the day, he was strangely irritated.

“That was fun,” Meg commented while Dean drove them back to Silverbell.

“Was it? I slept through half of it,” Castiel said, which was only partially truth.

“Told you, you should have stayed…”

“It’s not of import,” Castiel interrupted her, although he was suppressing a yawn. “In what exactly consisted your… fun?”

“Well, you know,” she shrugged. “Gad is not a bad person to grind against. And he seemed really nice.”

“Did he?” Castiel asked, his voice colder than he intended. “I don’t know. I think I saw him shouting at the director’s assistant.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it was very rude,” Castiel insisted.

He was being petty, and he knew he was being petty, but he was too exhausted to care. Meg, however, only found his anger amusing, because she chuckled at him.

“See you crazy kids tomorrow.”

“Goodbye, Dean.”

“You know, I never did come around showing you the new lyrics,” Meg commented while they walked towards the mansion.

“Right,” Castiel remembered. “And the song I was writing… it’s ready.”

“Oh.”

They halted in front of the closed door together.

“Twelve songs,” Meg said. “We’re done.”

“Yeah,” Castiel said. “Who would have thought?”

None of them attempted to move past where they were. It was like entering the mansion would mark the beginning of the end of their partnership. It was dawning on Castiel that afterwards Meg would probably have to go on tours and do more interviews and shoot more videos (probably meet more cute actors with perfect abs, too). And he… well, he would have to start an apartment hunt with the money from the album. Probably start sending his compositions to more publishing agencies, find a movie that needed a soundtrack or another artist who…

Meg was looking up at him, licking her lips and opening her mouth like she wanted to say something. After a few seconds passed, it was obvious she couldn’t find the words, so Castiel started for her:

“Meg,” he said. “I just wanted to say, before we… end this endeavor… that it’s been an honor working with you.”

“Don’t lie. It’s been a pain in the ass.”

“Well, yes,” Castiel admitted, with a smile. “But an honor, too. And a privilege. You’re a very talented and passionate woman, and I learned a lot about music and about myself with you…”

“Stop it, Clarence,” she cut him off. “I’m gonna get all teary.”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is,” Castiel continued. “Thank you.”

Meg looked away. Castiel had the impression she had really got teary and was trying to wipe her eyes before he noticed. However, a second later, she gently punched him in the shoulder.

“Thank you, you idiot,” she said. Her voice sounded firm, so maybe he was wrong. “You’ve helped me create something I’m actually proud about. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Castiel wanted to say that she should be proud of everything she accomplished, because he knew how hard sometimes she had to fight against other people’s expectation, and her demons and…

Meg reached for the door handle. Silverbell and its walls full of echoes awaited them.

 

* * *

 

“Let me go first,” Castiel asked once they were all settled in the living room.

“Oh, this should be good,” Meg commented when he started moving his fingers fast over the keyboard.

He remembered how she told him rock was about things that made you punch walls. And he remembered she had been afraid and self-conscious at the club. How powerful she had seemed standing in front of that entire crowd, half certain they all hated her and how surprised she’d been at the love she received.

Maybe he had been writing that song ever since that night.

_You tried to silence her_

_But her voice is far too loud_

_You tried to change her_

_But she’s standing her ground_

_You tried to break her_

_Oh, but you cannot destroy her_

His singing was awful, and he was aware of it. But he didn’t want to give Meg the lyrics. He wanted to tell her those things with his own voice.

_She’s a hurricane, she’s the raging storm_

_Go ahead; take your best shot_

_She’ll spit you in the eye_

_Beaten and bleeding and bruised_

_She’ll stand up and shout to your face:_

_“You cannot destroy me!”_

_No, you cannot destroy her_

The song ended. Castiel remained immobile, not daring to look over his shoulder to see Meg’s expression. As a result, the silence dragged on and on for several seconds, until he found it in himself to ask:

“Well… what do you think?”

Meg still didn’t say anything. Getting a little scared now by that lack of reaction, he turned around slowly.

“Meg?” he called, nervously. “What do you think? Of course, you’re going to have to fix the lyrics and…”

“It’s perfect.”

The answer was so blunt and so sweet she might as well have grabbed his face and planted a kiss on his lips. Castiel stared at her in utter bafflement. Meg was smiling wide at him from the couch, hugging her guitar close to her chest.

“It’s perfect, Cas,” she repeated. “Only thing I would change is the point of view so it’d be first person. I mean, if you don’t mind that.”

“No, of course not,” Castiel said. “You can do whatever you like.”

“But it’s your song…”

“Yes, but I wrote it for you,” Castiel declared. He immediately had to hang on to the edge of his bench to resist the urge to cover his mouth with his hands.

Meg’s smile became even more radiant, and he could have almost sworn he saw her cheeks getting pinker.

“Well, that’s, uh… my turn,” she said, placing the guitar over her knees. “I hope you don’t think I’ve butchered it too much.”

Castiel laughed awkwardly at the joke while Meg gently coerced the first few sweet notes out of her strings.

_Like a lazy summer dawn_

_He’s warm and he’s gentle_

_My sky-eyed boy_

_Like a half remembered song_

_He’s distant yet present_

_My sky-eyed boy_

Castiel swallowed loudly. Meg had transformed his awkward lines about an abstract girl into a whispered poem, a lullaby that rolled out of her lips with infinite sweetness. He stared at her, transfixed, while Meg’s fingers continued to move gently over the guitar’s neck.

_He can be stubborn and shy_

_Sometimes I lay by him_

_And he always lights up my nights_

Castiel blinked several times to disperse the tears. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready for how his music and Meg’s words had created something so beautiful, so sincere.

_And if there are ever any clouds_

_I’ll chase them away_

_‘Cause I can’t live without his stars_

_He has the sun in his face_

_My sky-eyed boy, shining so bright…_

 

* * *

 

The last note faded in the air and a solemn silence fell in the studio. Castiel wiped his tears with the back of his hands. It didn’t matter how many times he heard that song, it always managed to put a lump in his throat.

It was the last recording session, and everyone had been strangely quiet and attentive while Meg performed _Sky-Eyed Boy_. She’d recorded in one take, straight through. Not even Ash had dared to interrupt her, because it was obvious Meg knew exactly what she was doing. She knew exactly how to make that song as emotional as possible. She had smiled like she was biting back her laughter when she saw Castiel crying the first time she performed it for him, but then she had hold him for a long time until he was able to collect himself.

Ash turned on the microphone so Meg could hear him inside the recording booth:

“Congratulations,” he said. “It’s a rock album.”

Meg raised her fist in the air, and Castiel couldn’t hear her, but he was certain she was screaming in triumph. She put the guitar down and ran outside, high-fiving Ash, Kevin and Garth. Then she jumped directly at Castiel, who almost instinctively opened his arms to catch her.

Garth and Kevin clapped and cheered and Ash put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. Castiel was too caught in the scent of Meg’s perfume, in the softness of her hair against his chin. They hugged each other so tight he could almost hear his bones crackling, but it didn’t matter. Castiel suspected it’d be the last time they’d had an excuse to hug each other like that.

Meg broke away (way too soon, in his opinion), laughing and putting a lock of hair behind her ear.

“We gotta call Jo,” she said, grabbing her cellphone from the table. “We gotta call everybody! We need to throw a barbecue or something.”

“How about a party?” Castiel suggested. Meg halted her frantic looking for Jo’s number to look at him, eyes wide open in surprise. “I was just thinking, we have a pool and all this space, we might as well…”

“I like that idea,” Meg approved. “I love this place, by the way. I’m thinking about buying it. I’m gonna fucking buy it…”

She kept mumbling to herself while she turned for the stairs when Ash remembered something important.

“Hey, wait. What are you going to call it?”

“It already has a name, the Silverbell Mansion,” Meg said, matter-of-factly.

“He means the album, Meg,” Kevin explained.

“Oh,” Meg paused for a moment to think. She tapped her fingers against the screen of her phone, pensively, and then raised her eyes to look at Castiel. A wide, complicit grin appeared on her lips. “ _Indestructible_.”

“Cool,” Garth said. “Makes you sound like the Terminator.”

“Right?!” Meg said.

There was such a childlike amazement in her face that Castiel couldn’t help but laugh. He wasn’t even sure what he was laughing about. All he knew was that Meg was happy, happy and excited in a way that he hadn’t seen before, and her cheeks were red and her eyes were shinning. She was the most adorable person in the universe, even if immediately after this she went upstairs and ate all the peanut butter with her fingers.

Someone was clasping his shoulder. He barely realized there was a chorus of laughter around him, and Meg was the one laughing the loudest, grabbing onto him like it was the only way she could stand still. The pure joy in her expression made Castiel think everything was worth it: the pranks, the drama with April, the self-doubt. Meg was right: they had created something amazing together, and now they could simply be proud about it.

The burst of euphoria lasted a couple of minutes more. It left his sides sore and his face wet, but Castiel had never felt so satisfied in his entire life.

 

* * *

 

Jo wanted to sit on the album for a while to generate suspense, so the release date (and the party that’d come with it) were set for August the 31st at midnight. Which meant they had an entire month of not writing, but still living in the Silverbell Mansion.

“We could write some bonus tracks,” Meg suggested. “Now we have the creative energy pumping through our veins and whatnot, we could totally…”

“Meg,” Castiel said, putting both hands on her shoulders to get her to stop pacing around the living room. “Listen. You’re going to go mad. The album’s ready. Say it with me: the album is ready.”

Meg looked at him with a tilted head.

“No, it works better when Benny tries to calm me down,” she decided.

Castiel laughed at her joke, but anyway, she had got Meg to stay quiet for a moment. She had been growing increasingly restless, as signaled by the returned of the vanilla pudding and the mayonnaise jar.

“What if they hate it?” she asked once, eating spoonful after spoonful while shifting endlessly on the couch. “What if everyone hates it, like it happened last time?”

“Meg… Meg, look at me,” Castiel said, trying to get her to stay still or at least to give him the spoon. “You put everything in this album. _We_ put everything in this album. You said it yourself; it’s your best work to date.”

“Okay, but what if that isn’t enough?” Meg insisted. “What if my best isn’t enough?”

“Since when does Meg Masters give a fuck about what people think?”

Meg looked at him with pursed lips and an unconvinced expression, so before she could start protesting again, Castiel pried the jar away from her and grabbed her hand to pull her to get her to stand up.

“Come on. Do you remember what you told me once?” he asked. “About the cabin fever and how it makes you want to start punching walls? I think we’re getting it right now, so we’re going out.”

“Oh, yeah, and where exactly are we going?” Meg groaned. “Everywhere it’s going to be swarmed by paparazzi now I’m suddenly on the spotlight again.”

“We’ll find some place,” Castiel said, although he wished he felt as confident about that as he had sounded. “Go get changed.”

Meg opened her mouth, like she was thinking about protesting again, but in the end, she turned around and disappeared upstairs. Castiel called the only person he knew that could help him with that.

“You’re taking Meg out on a date?” Charlie screamed in his ear once he finished explaining what he needed.

“It’s not a date,” Castiel said, cringing. Oh, God, he hoped like hell Meg hadn’t thought it that way too. She had been very clear she just wanted to be friends with him, and he fully intended to respect that. “She needs a little distraction, that’s all. She has some leftover adrenaline, and… well, do you know somewhere fun and discreet?”

Charlie went quiet for a while, and then she shouted “Oh!” very loud, like she’d just had a brilliant idea.

“Take her to the Santa Monica Pier!” she suggested. “There’s food, and an aquarium, and a carrousel! I don’t know if you can get into the Park ‘cause it’s Friday, but it’s probably going to be so packed with people that nobody’s going to notice you two. It’s perfect.”

“Thank you, Charlie…”

“Make sure to take the Boulevard route so you can see the Hollywood Hills,” Charlie said. “That’s very romantic.”

“It’s not a date.”

“I’m so happy for you!” his friend said, completely ignoring him. “Have lots of fun!”

“Charlie, it’s not…” Castiel tried to insist, but Charlie had already hung up on him.

“Is this alright?” Meg asked from atop the stairs.

She was wearing some of her less ripped jeans, which was to say, it only had holes on her knees and her thighs. Her grey tank top had two skeleton hands showing their middle fingers and a phrase that said: “You’re fucking the band? Bitch, I am the band.” His relief was immediate. It wasn’t much different from what she wore when they had “people” over.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you look perfect.”

Meg turned her head to put on her aviator sunglasses, but Castiel was pretty certain he saw her smiling to herself.

Gordon looked at them from above his book when they approached the gate.

“Do I even want to know?” he asked. Before either Castiel or Meg could come up with an excuse of why they were leaving without Meg’s bodyguard, Gordon leaned over and pressed a button. “You know what? If you get in trouble, I’ll just say I didn’t see you leave.”

“Thank you, Gordon,” Meg said, and despite her smirk, there wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

Castiel signaled a taxi to stop for them. He was beginning to wonder how much of the five thousands had he already spent on transportation alone.

“So, where are we going?” Meg asked.

“The Santa Monica Pier,” Castiel replied. Before the driver turned around the corner, he remembered to add: “Take the Boulevard route, please. I want to see the hills,” he explained, to Meg’s unspoken question. She smiled at him and relaxed on her seat.

“This should be fun.”

 

* * *

 

As Charlie had predicted, the Pier was so full it was hard for them to make way between the families and the tourist that stopped every two steps to snap a picture. They ended up holding hands for the sole purpose of not losing each other in the crowd. That was Castiel’s story, anyway, and he was sticking with it.

“You know, this is awesome,” Meg commented as they took a stroll next to the ocean line. “I have lived in California how many years? And I never came to this place. I didn’t know what I was missing.”

Castiel had to agree. Despite the multitude and the noise, the shore line view was something to behold: just thousands and thousands of ocean miles, glittering underneath the sun. There were seagulls chirping and trying to steal people’s food, and a group of men standing around with fishing rods in their hands, completely still and concentrated, ignoring the turmoil around them.

“I could see myself living around here,” he said, thinking out loud.

“Maybe,” Meg replied. “If you don’t mind dealing with the tourists every season.”

“Where do you live?” he asked her. “Maybe we can be neighbors.”

Meg giggled, but by the way she avoided his gaze, Castiel deduced he had made her uncomfortable.

“You do live somewhere, don’t you?”

“Well, the lease on my last apartment expired and I haven’t had the chance to start looking for a new one,” Meg admitted, with a shrug. “So, basically… I’m kinda homeless.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Castiel laughed, but a second later he realized this wasn’t another of Meg’s jokes. “Really? You don’t have a place on your own? At all?”

“That’s kinda what happens when you live in tour buses and smelly motels,” Meg said. “If you get lucky and your band gets famous, you start living in slightly bigger tour buses and decent hotels.”

“Okay, but you weren’t always on tour,” Castiel argued. “What did you do when you had to come home?”

“Basically, I crashed wherever I could,” Meg told him. “There was always a couch or an extra bed somewhere. In fact, home for me was New York, and I didn’t go back there nearly as many times as I should have.”

Her face went somber. Castiel didn’t have to ask to know she was talking about her father. They stopped to lean on the railings and watched the incessant waves for a while in silence.

“Guess now I’m stuck here permanently,” she concluded. “I probably should get a place.”

“So you really meant that about buying Silverbell?”

“I’d love to, but it probably costs an obscene amount of money,” Meg said. “Guess I’ll start thinking about it after the next tour Jo is already organizing.”

“Right,” Castiel nodded. He had forgotten there was a ticking clock on how much time he could spend with Meg now that the album was finished.

“And what about you?” she asked. “What are you going to do once I’m finally out of your hair?”

“I have no idea,” Castiel replied, sincerely. His plans so far had consisted on finding a way to let his mother know he was staying there, and judging by the call he had received after April left… well, he didn’t see himself being welcomed back at Pontiac any time soon. “I’m guessing I’ll write some more, send more music to publishing agencies. I actually have something going for me in my CV now.”

“Yeah, unless the album is another flop.”

“Ah, yes. We should never exclude the possibility of excruciating failure,” Castiel said, nodding gravely.

Meg laughed at his seriousness and bumped her shoulder against his. She didn’t freak out at the mention of failure, so taking her out of the house was working.

“Well, I’m glad I’ll know where to find you when I get back,” she said.

They stayed in silence once more. Castiel tried not to think how long it would be until then and how much things might have changed by that point.

“Hey, wanna go to the aquarium?” Meg asked, suddenly, cutting that gloomy train of thoughts. Well, at least they’d still have a couple more of sunny afternoons for themselves. He smiled at her.

“Of course.”

They spent the next couple of hours avoiding kids who ran around and stuck their noses against the glasses, but at least the ambient was dark and cool. They took pictures of the shark tank because Meg said they reminded her of the executives of her previous label, and sat for a very long time to watch the fishes swimming in undecipherable patterns and the algae waving in the water. It was amazing how peaceful it was there. Castiel kept glancing at Meg, only to find that all signs of her previous anxiety were gone.

By the time they emerged, blinking confused at the sudden brightness, they realized it was way past lunch time. Castiel was about to suggest that they went to one of the food carts parked around when a voice shouted at them, shattering the quietness of their outing:

“There she is! Meg! Meg Masters!”

“Oh, fuck no!” Meg protested.

There were at least five different men with cameras running at them, one of them with a microphone and a frantic expression as they ran in their direction.

“Meg, how is the new album coming through?”

“Can you give us a smile, please?”

“Who is your friend?”

Meg automatically raised her middle finger at them. With her free hand, she grabbed Castiel’s and began walking faster.

“How the hell did they know I was here?” she asked, under her breath.

“Maybe somebody spotted you?”

The cameramen and journalist with notepads in their hands began flooding around them, closing their escape route and screaming even more questions and requests for Meg to take off her glasses or look at the flashes exploding in their faces. To make matters worse, people had noticed and were turning in their direction, probably to try and find out which famous person were the paparazzi stalking.

“Now what?” Castiel asked, trying to find a free path for them to leave.

“I don’t know,” Meg said, with an anguished rictus in her mouth. “Usually, this is the moment I make a run for the truck and Dean gets me out of here.”

“Okay, so…” Castiel looked around, and had an idea. “Let’s make a run for it.”

Meg followed the direction of his gaze, and at first she seemed confused. She raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth, but then she seemed to understand it, because she nodded.

The gripped on their hands tightened, and with the journalist still trying crying out their questions, they dove into the crowd. There followed a short battle of elbows in ribs and stomping on feet. Some mothers began protesting that their children were getting scared, and a couple of people got all up on the journalists faces and started complaining they were ruining their excursions and that they needed to get out of the way. By the time the confusion resided a little bit, one of the journalists looked around and asked out loud:

“Hey, where did they go?”

“I saw them,” said the lady that tended the food chart. “They went that way!”

The swarm of paparazzi immediately started running on the direction she pointed. A couple of seconds later, calm had returned to the Santa Monica Pier.

Castiel popped his head up from behind the chart.

“Okay, I think they left.”

Meg still waited a couple of seconds before standing up, and even then she kept looking over her shoulder in paranoia. After a moment, she covered her face with her hands and her shoulders began shaking.

“Meg, it’s alright,” Castiel said, worried about her. “It’s going to take them a while to run to the other end of the pier, and…”

Meg lifter her face, and he realized she was laughing uncontrollably instead of crying like he had thought.

“That was fast thinking, Clarence!” she congratulated him between chuckles. “Oh, I hope those leeches get rolled over by a car.”

That wasn’t a very nice sentiment, but Castiel could completely understand where it was coming from. They stepped away from the chart, still taking cautious looks around.

“So are you gonna order something or…?” asked the food lady, probably way too used at having celebrities hide behind her while trying to escape the paparazzi.

They ended up buying some shrimp kebabs from her, and chewing them lazily while they walked back to the Boulevard to look for a taxi. Meg’s phone began vibrating like crazy, and when she took it out, she laughed again at Jo’s increasingly desperate messages asking about her whereabouts.

“Apparently, you were right,” Meg commented, showing Castiel her Twitter feed. There was a picture of them passing in front the crustaceous tank. “They’re fast, you’ve gotta give them that.”

“You should call Jo before she suffers a stroke,” Castiel recommended.

So Meg spent half the ride back to Silverbell trying to appease her producer.

“Okay. Yes. Yes, I’ll call Dean next time. I promise,” she said over and over. Castiel could hear Jo’s muffled voice shouting a string of warnings on the other end. “Yes, Jo. Yes, I know. Okay, I’m gonna hang up now. Bye, Jo.”

She ended the call with an exasperated sigh and shook her head.

“This can’t be good for her blood pressure,” she commented.

“Well, it’s not like you help her a lot…”

“Do I need to remind you that this little excursion was your idea?” Meg said, but she didn’t sound angry at all. There was, however, a dull sadness in the smile she gave Castiel. “But I had a good time, Clarence”

“You’re very welcome,” Castiel said.

They watched the city parade across their window for a long while.

“You know it’s always going to be like this with me,” Meg commented. “Comes with the territory. There’ll always be someone just waiting to tear me apart or show my secrets to the world.”

Her voice trailed off. Castiel had the impression she was trying to tell him something, but he wasn’t exactly sure what it could be.

“But you’re used to it,” Castiel pointed out. “You know how to take care of yourself.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said, simply.

“If it’s me, then you don’t have to worry either,” he replied. “I’m always going to be your friend. No matter what.”

Meg took a long while to answer.

“Thank you, Cas,” she said, in the end. “I don’t know how long you’ll be able to keep that promise. But thanks anyway.”

He smiled, as if to assure her it was fine. It wasn’t like he felt a stab in the gut knowing that what he felt for her wasn’t reciprocated and probably never would be. It wasn’t like he was still collecting himself after the disaster breaking up with April had been and he wasn’t sure how to approach a new relationship. It wasn’t like his narrow window of opportunity was shrinking before his eyes and there was nothing he could really do to stop it.

But for now, they were together. And that was more than enough.


	12. Doom's Day

The day of the release, Meg dropped her laptop on the breakfast table and instructed Castiel to hide it away.

“Bury it. Burn it. I don’t care,” she said. “Just… get it away from me.”

“Meg…”

“Don’t tell me I’m being irrational,” she groaned. “I don’t want to read the reviews; I don’t want to see how it is doing on iTunes or Billboard or whatever. I just… I don’t want to know.”

Castiel looked at her, and had to recognize she seem at the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her hands were balled up in fists and she kept biting her lip compulsively. Her hair was a mess (not that it was usually in its place, but today it looked particularly messed up), and her eyeliner was all over the place, like she had applied it with a trembling pulse.

“Very well,” he said in the end, pulling the computer to his side of the table.

“Thank you!” Meg sighed, and flailed down on her usual chair. A loud, farting noise echoed in the dining room. “The fuck…?”

Castiel didn’t even raise his eyes from his plate of scrambled eggs while Meg stood up to find a whoopee cushion right underneath her butt.

“Cas?” she asked, obviously confused.

“Well, would you look at that?” Castiel commented, right before taking a long sip from his cup of coffee. “It looks like someone knew you were going to be rather anxious this day and decided to help out with that by playing a prank or two on you.”

“Oh, that’s _very_ mature!” Meg said, rolling her eyes while Castiel chuckled to himself. “So very mature, Clarence.”

“Well, look at the bright side,” Castiel said. “You’re going to be so busy trying to figure out what sort of traps I have prepared that you’re not even going to think about the album.”

Meg glared at him for a very long time while Castiel gulped down the rest of his breakfast.

“Changed my mind,” she announced. “Gimme my laptop back.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Cas…”

“Well, you should take this opportunity to relax,” Castiel said, standing up with Meg’s laptop underneath his arm. “Remember, we have a party tonight. It would be a shame if you were too on edge to entertain our guests.”

“I’m going to kill you!” Meg screamed in his wake. Castiel simply laughed as he walked towards the stairs.

But he had been right about one thing: Meg was so paranoid for the rest of the day that she didn’t even try to pick his room’s lock to get the laptop back. She stayed on the couch most of the day, surfing channels with Castiel sitting by her side, smiling smugly with his own computer in his lap.

“What are you reading?” Meg asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Just an e-book,” Castiel said, with a shrug.

“Liar,” Meg accused him. “You’re reading a review, aren’t you?”

“I am not.”

“What does it say?” she continued to ask, trying to catch a glimpse of the screen over Castiel’s shoulder. “Come on, tell me!”

“Weren’t you saying, not two hours ago, that you wanted to know nothing about the Internet’s opinion?” he reminded her, holding the computer out of her reach.

Meg muttered something that sounded a lot like a curse word and slid back to her side of the couch with arms crossed and pursed lips.

“Do you really want to know?” Castiel asked her. Meg raised her head at him, cautiously. “Okay, I guess I’ll show you, then.”

Meg didn’t even try and pretend she wasn’t desperate. She snatched the computer away from Castiel and desperately hit the space bar until the screensaver vanished… and confirmed that he was reading a digital edition of _Carrie_.

“Oh, come on,” she complained, as she returned it to him. “You don’t even like Stephen King!”

“I might like Stephen King,” Castiel said. “There are plenty of things you don’t know about me, Meg.”

Meg stood up with a groan.

“Where are you going?” Castiel asked, trying to sound worried but failing spectacularly because of how much Meg’s fury entertained him.

“Upstairs, for a shower,” she answered as she climbed the stairs.

“Very well.”

It took three seconds for Meg to run back down.

“You did something to the heater, didn’t you?” she asked, pointing a finger at him.

“Do you really think I would stoop down to your level in such a classless manner?” he replied, without even looking at her.

Meg stayed in her place, tapping her foot against the floor for several seconds.

“No,” she concluded. “You just _want_ me to think you did something to the heater, but you actually didn’t. You don’t have the guts.”

“Well, if that’s really what you think, perhaps you should go upstairs and try,” Castiel shrugged.

Meg still hesitated for a moment before turning her back on him. Castiel counted five minutes on his computer clock until the string of insults against his mother floated down to him. When he looked up, he saw Meg standing atop of the stairs, wrapped in a towel with her hair dripping wet. It would have been kind of sexy if it wasn’t because her teeth were chattering and she was glaring at him, obviously already imagining ways to get rid of his lifeless body.

“It’s very lucky we’re having this wonderful weather,” Castiel commented in his most casual tone of voice. “So perfect for an ice cold shower, wouldn’t you say?”

“I hate you,” Meg said, as she uselessly hugged herself in order to retain some heat.

“That’s unfortunate,” Castiel said. “I honestly thought we had grown very close, Meg.”

“Turn it back on, right now,” she ordered. “Or else…”

“You know, I was thinking about doing just that,” he said, after ostensibly taking a look at the time. “I don’t particularly enjoy cold showers, and I really need to take one. It’s very likely that the catering service will be here soon. We have to be in presentable conditions to receive them…”

“What catering service?” Meg asked, her eyes opening in horror.

“The one Jo hired,” Castiel explained. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“Why do we need a catering service for? I thought it was going to be just a small group of people!”

“Well, that really depends on what your perception of small is,” he said. “As I understand it, the label’s major executives, important figures of the music industry and some selected members of the press are going to be here as well.”

Meg disappeared upstairs again, swearing out loud she was going to get Castiel’s head for this.

Castiel closed the _Carrie_ e-book and continued reading the review of the album he had found.

A couple of hours later, Meg’s hysteria and anger seemed to have remitted.

“Come on, you can’t be mad at me,” Castiel insisted while she sat on the kitchen’s stool looking at the people from the catering coming and going. “I did exactly the same thing you did to me.”

“So that was payback?” she asked, crooking an eyebrow.

“Well, you know what they say,” he replied. “Revenge is a dish best served… cold.”

“Oh, my God,” Meg pinched her nose and huffed. She still refused to look at him.

“Meg, you’re not really mad, are you?” he asked, suddenly worried. “It was just a joke, I didn’t mean to…”

He kept excusing himself for a little longer until he heard Meg laughing very quietly.

“You’re bad at this,” she sneered. “First rule of prank wars: you don’t apologize.”

“Oh,” Castiel said, and suddenly he was smiling as well. “Alright, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“What I really don’t get are these people,” she added, pointing at the persons coming and going from the kitchen. “They’re parading all that food in front of me and expect me not to try and take a bite? They make me hungry. I’m hungry.”

As she continued to speak, she went to the fridge and fished out her jar of peanut butter. Castiel watched carefully as she sank a spoon into it, and with all the gusto in the world, put it inside her mouth.

A second later, Meg was spitting and coughing on the sink.

“What the hell?!”

“Well, I think a person might have replaced the peanut butter with mayonnaise and food coloring,” Castiel said. “Unfortunately, that person has just been advised not to apologize.”

This time Meg looked truly offended. More than that, she looked like she was ready to commit murder.

“I think I should check on the garden,” Castiel said, standing up to make a daring escape.

“You’re dead, Novak!” Meg shouted.

Castiel ran for his life, but he still was too slow. Meg reached him on the lobby, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. In his attempt to get away from her grip, Castiel ended up tripping on the carpet, which meant a second later they were both on the floor. Castiel tried to wriggle, but Meg was having none of that. After some struggle, some tickling, and a lot of involuntary laughter while the two of them tried to pretend they were really trying to kill each other, Meg managed to straddle Castiel and pin his hands over his head.

“Got you,” she grinned triumphantly.

“Very well, very well,” Castiel chuckled breathlessly. “I surrender.”

Meg didn’t say a word. She just smiled down at him, the same mischievous smile Castiel had seen on her when she was about to do something particularly evil.

“Meg…?” he asked, nervously.

Meg leaned closer to him and…

Someone cleared their throat, loudly. They looked up in horror to find Jo standing there, with a crooked eyebrow and a disapproving look.

“Oh, hi, Jo,” Meg greeted her as casually as she could. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Are you kidding me, guys?” Jo shouted. “This party is starting in just a couple of hours, and you two are fooling around like you’ve got no care in the world?”

“Sorry,” Castiel said, mortified. Meg moved away from him, but only to sit on the carpet frowning at her producer.

“You could have warned me this was going to be the party of the century,” she groaned.

“Hardly, just a little get together to promote your album,” Jo said. It was her turn to smile like she didn’t realize that Meg was utterly uncomfortable with the entire deal. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of large amounts of people stomping your place.”

“Never,” Meg said, and Castiel had the impression she was more or less accepting a challenge.

“Wonderful,” Jo clapped. “So, Pamela’s already in your room. You should go to her so she can do your make-up and hair. And you,” she added, grabbing Castiel’s arm before he could sneak away, “are going to try on the clothes I bought you. I hope I got your size right.”

“Do I have to?” Castiel cringed. Jo was already dragging him upstairs. The last glimpse he got of Meg was she sticking her tongue out at him, as if his embarrassment was only a small price to pay for making her eat mayonnaise.

Jo closed the door behind them. Dean was already standing in the room, hanging three tuxedos from the closet’s door, which make Castiel wonder when had those people arrived. And how much exactly they’d seen from their impromptu wrestling match.

“So how is she?” Jo asked, cutting his train of thought.

“As predicted, she’s been rather jumpy the entire day,” Castiel informed her. “Benny was right. The pranks did help a little…”

“And I bet you went the extra mile to keep her distracted,” Dean said with a chuckle. Jo elbowed him in the ribs.

So they had seen most of their wrestling match, Castiel concluded.

“It’s nothing like that,” he said, feeling how his face began to heat up. “Meg and I are friends and…”

“Sure, whatever,” Jo interrupted him. She threw one of the wrapped tuxedos at him and pointed to the bathroom’s door.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Castiel continued justifying himself, fully aware no one in the room believed him.

“Save it for the PR department,” Jo replied, bluntly. “Just get in there and get changed.”

Castiel realized he had no option, but still, before obeying he had to ask:

“Are you going to tell her? About the charts?”

“When she’s ready to hear it,” Jo replied gravely, and waved her finger once more in the bathroom’s direction.

Jo had a keen eye for clothes, because the suit fit Castiel to a T. He looked in the mirror and almost didn’t recognize himself in that elegant black three-piece, all sophisticated and lustrous. The last time he’d worn a suit like that, he had been twelve and about to take his First Communion. Back then, the cheap rented suited was a little too baggy, and it itched Castiel all over. It had been a really sacrifice not to scratch himself.

And now it was an even bigger sacrifice having to put on a bowtie.

“Come on, it’s not complete without it,” Jo said, passing it over his head and adjusting it so tight Castiel felt his throat being mercilessly compressed. Dean, who was sitting on the bed, put a hand on his chin reflexively and shook his head.

“Nope.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jo agreed and ripped the bowtie away. Dean passed her a blue tie.

“Woah, I can do it!” Castiel said, before Jo had the chance to choke him again.

“Fine,” she said, forcing the tie in his hand. “Go do it somewhere else, we have to change too.”

“You’re going to change in the same room?”

Instead of answering, Jo simply pushed him out of his own bedroom and closed the door behind him. Castiel sighed and passed the tie over his head, trying not to be distracted as he walked down the stairs.

He still almost tripped on the first few steps. Meg had just come out from her own room, looking every bit like she was about to take a trip down the most formal of all the red carpets in the world. She was wearing a strapless blue dress that ended right above her knees, with a wide silver belt marking her waist. Pamela had dyed her hair black again and styled it in big, formless curls, so now she looked a little bit like the old Meg from the photographs he’d seen when she was still in Satan’s Bride. Through the magic of make-up, Meg’s lips looked even more voluptuous than usual and her eyes bigger than ever. She descended slowly, like she was floating on air, like she had suddenly become some sort of fairy queen stooping down to the level of simple mortals.

Of course, that illusion was shattered the minute she was standing in front of Castiel.

“I hate heels,” she commented, pointing at the vertiginous silver sandals she was wearing.

Castiel couldn’t help but to chuckle. Yes, that was his Meg, dry and cynical, and he preferred her like that.

“Well, you look beautiful,” he said, anyway, because it was the truth.

“Thank you,” she smiled. “You’re not so bad yourself. And look,” she added, placing a hand on his tie to adjust it. “We match.”

“Aww, you guys are so cute!” said a voice behind them.

They turned to find Charlie, wearing a black and white dress, sitting on the couch next to Benny, who was snacking on some canapés Castiel was pretty certain he’d stolen from the kitchen. Meg rolled her eyes, annoyed.

“When I buy this place, I’m putting an electronic lock on the door,” she groaned.

“Don’t stress yourself out, sistah’,” Benny said. “Try these, they’re delicious.”

Meg looked around, almost as she expected some other uninvited guest to interrupt her. She moved to stretch her hand towards the canapé…

… and like a sixth sense of some sort had warned her, Pamela came running down the stairs (an impressive feat, considering she was wearing heels even taller than Meg’s and a tight tube red dress) and snatched the appetizer from her hands.

“Fresh paint!” she reminded her.

“Oh, come on!” Meg protested. “I’m starving.”

“Wait until the pictures are taken,” Pamela said, putting a hand on her waist and looking at Meg like a severe school teacher. “Then you can eat and ruin your look as much as you want, but so help me, you will be fabulous in the pictures for the press while on my watch.”

Meg pouted, and looked away.

“I’m blaming you for everything,” she said, pointing an accusing finger upstairs. Jo was coming down in a little black dress, not nearly as produced as Meg (Pamela visibly cringed) followed by Dean, who was wearing a tuxedo with Cas’ discarded bowtie.

“Okay, I think we’re all set!” Jo said, ignoring Meg. “Remember, unless they have an official pass clearly showing, they’re not members of the press and you’re not obligated to answer any questions or pose for a photo. If they get too nosey, Sam is around. Just ask him to come closer and say he’s Meg’s lawyer. That always works.”

Charlie nodded, as if she was absorbing attentively everything Jo said. When the producer finished talking, she raised her hand in the air.

“Question: it’s the first time I come to one of these parties, so I’m not sure about the protocol,” she said. “If Scarlett Johansson shows, am I allowed to hit on her?”

“Scar Jo is an actress, why would she be here?” Jo asked, frowning.

“Point. But if I see any other cute female celebrity…”

“Yes, Charlie, you can flirt with whoever you like.”

Charlie closed her fist and muttered: “Yes!”

“Alright,” Jo glanced once more at everyone with a hand over the doorknob, perhaps trying to find something that was out of place. When she didn’t, she sighed: “Let’s do this.”

The second the door cracked open, thousands of camera flashes began glimmering in the garden. Meg grabbed Castiel’s arm, and although her smile was perfect and happy, he could feel the grip of her fingers tightening as they moved forwards. He put a hand over hers, maybe to assure her everything was going to be alright, but Meg was far too tense to register that.

The flashes blinded and confused Castiel for a moment, so he couldn’t really know what was going on around him. He knew that there were lots of people standing about, and he knew there were tables and chairs that hadn’t been there that morning, but apart from that, the world became a hurricane of lights and screamed questions.

“Smile until they go away,” Meg whispered next to him, but the photographers apparently had no intention of doing that until Dean stood in front of them and told them to cut it out.

“If you want a picture of Miss Masters, you can ask her later,” he said, extending his hands as if to push the hoard of journalists away. “This is her party. Please, be respectful.”

Slowly but steadily, the camera flashes died down. It still took Castiel several seconds to focus his sight again.

“How do you not go blind?” he asked rubbing his eyes.

“You’re in the business long enough, you develop a tolerance,” Meg replied with a shrug.

They tried to take a step to the nearest table, but they were immediately intercepted by a brown-haired woman and a bearded man that looked already tired and uncomfortable in his suit.

“Well, hello there, Meg,” the woman said.

“Hi, Mrs. Harvelle,” Meg’s smile was even more tense than before. “Uh, Cas, I don’t think you’ve met these people? This is Ellen Harvelle and her husband Bobby Singer. They are… well, they’re our bosses. They own Roadhouse Records.”

“Oh. Nice to meet you, yes,” Castiel said, offering them their hand hastily. Bobby Singer practically broke his fingers, and his shake still felt weak in comparison to Ellen’s. He wasn’t exactly sure what to say to them (Thank them for the chance? For renting the mansion? For throwing the party?), but luckily for him, he didn’t have to say a word, because Jo came running to their aid.

“Cas, can I steal you for a second?” she said. “I want you to meet some people. Oh, hi, mom.”

“Hey, kiddo,” Ellen greeted her. “Nice party you’ve got going here.”

“Ah, yes. I can introduce you to the event planner later,” Jo replied, with a shrug. “Right now I really need to take Castiel for a second.”

“Is it absolutely necessary?” Meg asked.

There was a note of despair in her voice. She was obviously scared of being left alone with the people that basically would define if she would be left jobless at the end of her tour. Castiel instinctively grabbed her hand, just like he had on Santa Monica Pier so they wouldn’t be separated, but Jo pulled him away.

“Yes, I promise I’ll give him back in a sec,” she insisted. “Let’s go.”

Castiel looked back at Meg, who watched them with the same expression of a castaway sees the ship sailing in the opposite direction.

“Are you sure that was a wise idea?” Castiel asked, suddenly worried. “She seemed…”

“Yeah, she needs to lose her irrational fear of label executives,” Jo said, bluntly. She halted next to a table. “Okay, here they are. Cas, these are…”

“Alexis,” Castiel recognized them immediately. The vocalist raised her head and smiled, and her entire band soon gathered up around her.

“Oh, hello, you were… you were with Meg, that night at the club,” she remembered. “I didn’t catch your name.”

Castiel reckoned they hadn’t since they had all been too stunned by Meg’s presence to ask it. Not that he could blame them.

“This is Castiel Novak, the guy I was telling you about,” Jo said. “But I see you’ve… met?”

“Yeah, totally,” Josephine said, looking at him with a glimmer in her eyes. “So you’re the one who helped Meg write her album, right?”

“Yes, that would be me,” Castiel said, still unsure of where this was going.

“Cool, okay… the label is picking up Alexis and the Hunters,” Jo explained.

“Yes!” Krissy exclaimed, unable to contain her enthusiasm. “Meg gave them our record, and she said they should give us a chance and that maybe we could open for her if we get our album done in time or at least an EP…”

Alexis elbowed her and Krissy went quiet so Jo could continue.

“They’re good, but they’re still a little rough around the edges, melodically speaking,” she said. “So we were thinking maybe you could lend them a hand? Help them write their album?”

“Yes, like you did with Meg,” Aiden pointed out. “We loved it, dude, it was awesome.”

“It would be an honor if you worked with us,” Josephine added.

“Please!” Alexis said, putting her hands together like it was a prayer.

“Well… yes, of course,” Castiel said, without thinking about it twice. “I would love to.”

Krissy clapped her hands and suddenly the band was hugging and screaming with happiness. Castiel barely resisted the impulse to join them. Just a few weeks ago, he was saying he had no idea what to do with himself, and now suddenly he had plans for the future again.

“Great!” Jo added. “So I’ll program a brunch later this week and we can discuss the details. Enjoy the party.”

“We will!” Alexis assured them while Aiden beckoned a waitress to bring them some drinks. “Thank you!”

“Are they old enough to be drinking?” Castiel asked as Jo dragged him away.

“I didn’t see it, I couldn’t have stopped it,” Jo replied bluntly. “Okay, you can go back to being Meg’s security blanket now.”

Castiel once more wanted to protest that whatever Jo was thinking was going between them was actually not happening. But he realized his argument surely must have sounded hollow when Meg reached them just by the side of the pool and immediately grabbed his arm again.

“Hey,” she said, trying to sound casual and not at all happy that she’d found them again, and failing spectacularly.

“You okay?” Castiel asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied. “What time does the music start? People keep talking to me and it’s getting weird.”

“Well, this is a party for your album release,” Jo pointed out. “Why is it weird?”

“They’re all congratulating me,” Meg explained. “I don’t know why they’re congratulating me.”

Castiel and Jo exchanged looks, and the producer nodded. The moment had come.

“Well, Meg, I know you don’t like looking at charts and that,” she started. “But for being the first day the album is out, it’s doing pretty well on digital music stores.”

“Okay,” Meg said, toying with her hair to gather the courage to ask: “How well? Top twenty well?”

“Higher.”

“Top ten?” Meg asked, her eyes widening with the surprise. Jo shook her head. “Top five?!”

Jo grinned and then, slowly, raised her index finger in the air.

“Are you shitting me?!” Meg shouted, making all the heads around turn to look at them.

“We still have to wait one week to see how it did in Billboard,” Jo kept speaking, even though it was obvious Meg wasn’t listening anymore. “But overall, I think…”

Meg turned around to throw her arms around Castiel’s neck, and he had to react fast to catch her, because her entire weight crashing against him made him stumble on his feet…

And then they were falling.

They didn’t have the time to hold their breaths before the water swallowed them. Castiel shivered because of the sudden coldness and because he still had Meg’s body pressed against him. The skirt of her dress was tangling around his legs, and her hair floated wildly around her smirking face. The lights of the party and the starless night were far away and blurry above their heads, and for a second, it was easy to pretend they were the only people in a yet undiscovered underwater kingdom.

Meg pulled the lapels of his jackets and placed her lips over his. They felt warm and soft and slipped away a fraction of a second later, making him wonder if they had really been there at all.

But Castiel’s heartbeat responded by completely stopping and then going incredibly faster as if to compensate. His head felt dizzy, or maybe it was the lack of oxygen, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he would have given anything to have that moment last for all eternity.

They emerged a second later, both breathless and shivering. Someone (Castiel suspected Pamela) gave out a high pitch horrified scream. Meg was laughing with pure joy, with her hands still on Castiel’s lapels and his arms around her waist. Her dress was soaked to her skin, and of course there were flashes going off from every direction, photographing them together.

Castiel realized they had blown off any and all plausible deniability of their relationship.

Then Aidan shouted: “Pool party!” and the next thing they knew was that about twenty people jumped in with them, clothes and all.

And that was about the time the night evolved into a full blown riot.

 

* * *

 

Meg had no idea what time it was, but she was pretty sure it was too early for the lasts guests to be saying goodbye to them. Yes, the DJ and the catering staff had left an hour ago, and the slowly agonizing party had been moved inside with the maybe dozen people who had remained. They had been slowly but steadily leaving, and Meg was decided to outlast every single one.

“No, come on,” she begged when Benny stood up from his chair declaring he had to get some sleep. “Stay. We’re going to play musical chairs. Can we do that?”

The five people left in the leaving room (Charlie, the Winchesters, Jo and Castiel) groaned collectively.

“Meg, for the love of God,” Benny yawned. “It’s almost five.”

“Well, it’s too late to go to sleep now,” Meg reasoned. “You might as well wait for the sunrise.”

“I’m going to die, sista’,” Benny replied. “And you’re gonna be the death of me.”

Meg stuck her tongue out at him, but she still left her chair to walk him to the door because she needed some movement to stay awake.

“Have you noticed how Sam’s hands are so big?” Charlie was asking when Meg returned to the living room. She had a dreamy tone, like she was so tired and maybe a little drunk that she didn’t know she was taking incoherencies. “They’re enormous, look at them,” she added, lifting Sam’s wrist up so everyone in the room could have a look. Sam was dozing off in his chair, and he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“Everything about him is big,” Dean groaned. “Except for, you know…”

“Okay,” Jo said, suddenly raising her head in a burst of energy. “I think it’s time for us to go too.”

Castiel, who had been snoozing with his chin on his hand, jolted awake. “What? You’re leaving? Already?”

“Yeah,” Jo said, pulling Dean to his feet by the collar of his shirt. “We should have left when _someone_ set the garden flamingo on fire, ‘cause that was about the time all semblance of sanity was lost.”

“Hey, I have a reputation to protect,” Meg reminded her.

Jo was obviously not buying that argument, but she still gave Castiel and Meg a quick hug before running to help the others drag Sam to the car. And yes, that was a three persons’ job.

Meg closed the door behind them, and breathed in. The night was feeling a little bit chilly, perhaps because the summer was coming to an end. Or maybe because she was getting sick after that stunt she pulled with the pool. She really hadn’t meant to push Castiel, but he had lost his balance and it had just seemed rude to let go of him and let him fall alone. At least it’d given her an excuse to change into a pair of jeans and get rid of her heels.

Things had escalated from there, and it wasn’t exactly like Meg had tried to control them. She had felt euphoric, truly indestructible that night.

But now it was over, and they would probably have to face the consequences in the form of thousands of articles and distorted stories of what had happened. Well, that was Jo’s mess to clean. She had been the one who had insisted on the whole thing in the first place.

Castiel was lying in the couch when she turned around, looking asleep. He opened his eyes when he passed him and extended his hand towards her.

“That was some party,” he laughed as he pulled Meg to sit by his side.

“It was,” she said. “I hadn’t had that much fun in a while.”

And suddenly, all the tiredness from it came crashing down on her. Her muscles ached and she knew they’d would be worse in the morning (or… afternoon), and her eyelids seem to fall on their own volition. She leaned her head against Castiel’s shoulder…

Castiel brusquely moved away.

“Please, don’t do that.”

Meg stared him, confused. Castiel had an anguished expression in his face. His lips were quivering like he was about to cry, his blue eyes looked dim and bloodshot. He was pressing his hands tight, as if to keep them from trembling. They had been holding Meg’s hand a second ago, and she didn’t know why he suddenly felt the need to put distance between them, but it saddened her all the same.

“What?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, the whole…” he stopped, shaking his head. “Please don’t do it. Not unless you mean it.”

And suddenly, Meg realized what a colossal mistake she’d made. She’d kept touching or holding Castiel’s arm all through that night, and then when they’d fallen together into the water…

It’d just felt so natural she hadn’t even stopped to think about it. But of course to Castiel it’d meant something entirely different. Of course it’d made him uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, Castiel. Believe me, the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you,” Meg said, scurrying away. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“Meg,” Castiel called her when she got up. “Meg, come back. We have to talk about this.”

“I thought we’d agreed we weren’t bringing it up again.”

Looking at him in the eye while saying that was one of the hardest things Meg had to do in her life and she wouldn’t have felt shittier with herself if she’d straight up punch him in the gut. The effect would have been similar: Castiel’s stayed very still and quiet for a moment, the light in his eyes growing dimmer as he lowered them, his lips curving in a weird angle like he was biting the inside of his cheeks to stop himself from screaming.

She was convinced he was going to argue. That he was going to tell her that had been before and this was now, and things had changed in ways neither of them had come to expect. She was prepared to tell him, to explain to him she understood that he’d broken up with April because she wanted him to follow a script of his life she’d written that didn’t agree with him. And Meg would do anything (hell, she was giving him up right there) to not hold him back the same way, because he was brilliant, and kind, and headstrong and she couldn’t tie him down to the mess her life was, that it would continue to be.

Because that was the heart of the matter. Castiel was a million light years away from what she deserved.

That conversation didn’t happen. Meg wasn’t sure she would have been able to stand it if it had.

“I understand,” Castiel said, instead. He opened his mouth as if he was going to add something else, but he hesitated. They stood there, out of words, for several seconds until he said: “Goodnight, Meg.”

She climbed the stairs as fast as she could, her feet stomping loudly on every step. She almost lost balance when she entered her room, because her knees were trembling and her itchy eyes were flooding with tears. She had not even tried to pretend she wasn’t fleeing. Maybe she didn’t have the strength of mind to do that anymore. She leaned against the door, then slid her back down until she was sitting, covering her face with her hands and trying to convinced herself she had done the right thing.

 

* * *

 

The clean-up crew showed up early in the morning, so by the time she woke up, all traces of tables, chairs, spilt drinks and burnt down garden decorations were gone. Like it had never happened at all.

She tried to stay in her room for as long as she could, trying to convince her stomach that since they had eaten so much the day before they didn’t need to be doing that today. However, in the end, her basic human needs were stronger than her psychological fear of confrontation.

She found Castiel reading something in his computer in the kitchen counter, drinking from a smoking cup of coffee.

“Morning,” she greeted him.

“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“I’ve just woken up, therefore, it’s morning.”

Castiel chuckled, and Meg had never felt more relief since her period showed up during that weird time of her life where she, Lilith and Lucifer were all in a drunken threesome every other night. Castiel was still laughing at her jokes. They were still okay. They were still friends.

She snatched some cookies, poured some coffee and sat by Castiel’s side.

“What are you reading?”

“‘ _Ever since the release of_ Lessons in Repetition _, we’ve known Meg Masters’ upcoming album,_ Indestructible _was going to be far better than her previous one…’_ ” he read.

“Oh, my God,” Meg said, glancing away from his laptop. “I regret asking.”

“ _‘What we didn’t know was that it was going to be a juggernaut of pure, angry rock and roll. We weren’t prepared,’_ ” Castiel continued anyway. “ _‘The former Satan’s Bride’s guitarist not only shows her wonderful vocal skills, but also her talent as a composer and a lyricist. While on her previous album, the songs were credited to a number of people, this album’s existence is owned solely to Meg and her writing partner, Castiel Novak, who…’_ Uh, let’s skip that part.”

“No, come on,” Meg poked him. “You’re going to read what they say about me, you have to accept what they’re saying about you too.”

“ _‘… who she’s said in several interviews, is her kindred spirit musically speaking,’_ ” he read. “Did you really say that?”

“They might be paraphrasing, but it sounds about right,” she shrugged.

“ _‘Perhaps is this creative marriage that has made the album the wonder it is, for it’s definitely more cohesive melodically and thematically,’_ ” he continued, ignoring Meg’s little jolt at ‘creative marriage’. “ _‘Masters’ been definitely more invested in it, and its success (being released just months after its announcement without excessive promoting and reaching the number one spot on ITunes merely hours after coming out) sends a message to all labels out there to take a seat and let artist do their damn jobs, because that’s when the magic truly happens. With elaborated and powerful music, paired up with sharp and thoughtful lyrics that clearly reveal who was behind Satan’s Bride’s most clever lines,_ Indestructible _is emotional, honest and an all-around fun ride. Bravo, Meg Masters. Five stars for you.’_ ”

“That’s all fine and dandy, I guess,” Meg shrugged, sipping her coffee to try to hide her smile. “But you didn’t have to go out of your way to find praise in some dark fanboy’s blog.”

“I didn’t know Kerrang! was some dark fanboy’s blog,” Castiel frowned. “Do you want me to read you the Rolling Stone’s opinion? The Alternative Press’ one? They have a song by song review. They’re all very positive, I promise.”

Meg chuckled and shook her head. She couldn’t believe how pleased she was with herself, but more than that, she was extremely relieved that the album was finally out and people liked it and…

“Wait, people do like it, don’t they?” she asked. “We’re not talking just magazines that represent heartless corporations?”

So they went on Twitter and clicked in the hash tag (“Really? I have a hash tag?”), where they found comment after comment saying how they were listening the album at top volume and having their mind blown and pissing off their neighbors.

“Oh, my God,” Meg said. “This is amazing. I have to tell Jo to tweet them thanks.”

“I figured you might want that, so I took the precaution of asking her for your password,” Castiel said. “She didn’t appreciate me waking her up.”

Meg could only imagine how that conversation went. On the other hand, it was impressive and a little scary how well Castiel had come to know her, how he had known immediately that she would want to interact with her fans. Because, after all, they had been the driving force behind all that, the reason she hadn’t given up entirely even when she had wanted to. And Castiel, who hadn’t allowed her to quit.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, frowning.

Meg shook her head. “I’m just very glad we’re friends, Cas.”

That was probably the understatement of the century, but what else could she say? They had already established they weren’t talking about the _other_ thing.

“Me too,” Castiel said, but Meg had the impression his smile was a little sad. “And in case I don’t have time to tell you later, I wish you the best of luck in your tour.”

It was like he had seen the future or some stupid fortune cookie had warned him about it, because that very same night, Jo called to know if Meg’s passport was still valid because they were thinking about booking a series of concerts overseas for the following year.

“By overseas you mean…?”

“London, Paris, Madrid, maybe Rome and Berlin, too,” Jo said, like it was nothing. “And then the Latin American tour, of course.”

“Seriously?”

Meg hadn’t been on a tour so massive since her days with Satan’s Brides, and just the thought of it was stressing her out.

“Well, we still need mom and Bobby to give it the thumbs up,” Jo replied. “But if the record sales keep going this strong.”

“Jo, it hasn’t been out an entire day yet!” Meg reminded her.

“I know, but planning ahead never hurt anybody.”

Meg was tempted to ask when had that sweet, timid kid who’d approached her for a record deal right after she’d left rehab turned into such a massive control freak, but Jo was going on and on about ticket sales and that maybe some of the gigs would have to be moved to bigger accommodations, and had Meg started packing yet? She should start packing, because their lease on Silverbell was going to expire the same day Meg left for her first series of concerts in upstate California, before they moved East…

Meg hung up while Jo was still talking, pretty certain she wasn’t going to notice.

But despite’s Jo hyperactivity, she was right about something: she needed to prepare herself physically and mentally for what was coming, and that included putting her emotions on hold. Even when they threatened to get out of control the day she was coming down to find Castiel in the middle of the stairs.

“Oh, Meg,” he said, like he was somehow shocked to see her there, like there was any other person besides the two of them living there. “I was just… I was coming up to talk to you.”

Meg looked over his shoulder to find out he had packed his bags (including his old keyboard that hadn’t left its case since the day they’d arrived to the mansion) and stationed them right next to the door.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at them.

“That’s what I was coming to tell you. I found an apartment,” he said, with an awkward smile. “Well, Jo found me an apartment, and she told me I could move in today, and since you’re leaving tomorrow…”

“You’re going to be living with Alexis and her band, aren’t you?” Meg guessed.

“Right across the hall from them, yes,” Castiel confessed. “But the place has option to buy, so maybe when you come back I’ll be permanently installed there and you can… I don’t know, come crash in my couch?”

Meg laughed and took a step further to be at Castiel’s same level.

“Don’t overwork yourself, Clarence,” she recommended as she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him closer for a hug.

She had a perfectly valid reason to hold him so close and so tight for longer than it was strictly necessary for a hug. She wasn’t going to see him for a long time, and she was going to miss him like and maybe when they saw each other again, everything would have changed. She wasn’t just saying goodbye to him. She was saying farewell to her last chance at honesty.

When she let go off of him, she didn’t say anything, just smirked at his confusion until he smirked back. At the same time, the doorbell rang, echoing in the living room where they had spent so much time together.

“That’s my ride,” Castiel said.

“They’re actually calling? That’d be a first,” Meg joked.

Castiel laughed as he descended the last steps. He hesitated at the doorway for a moment, like he wanted to add something else. But maybe he thought it was best to end that goodbye in a happy note, so he simply waved and picked up his stuff.

After he was gone, Meg sat down on the steps, staring at nothing for a very long time.


	13. Indestructible

“GOOD MORNING, L. A.!”

Castiel groaned and rolled onto his stomach to turn off the radio alarm and pulled the covers over his head. He had ten minutes of grace before the radio turned on again.

“… so here today we’re inaugurating a new fun segment for you,” the Trickster said, sounding obscenely happy for it to be (Castiel opened one eye to peek at the hour) eight thirty o’clock in the morning. “It’s called ‘Tour Following’, and we’re going to be bringing to you the news from the artists whose tours are all the rage this year. Joining me on the phone from all the way to Seattle, we have our correspondent, Alfie. How does it look up there Alfie?”

“Well, you know, there’s not much to look at,” Alfie replied. “The fog pretty much covers everything.”

Castiel escaped into the bathroom before the canned laughter came in. He got a quick, cold shower and came out completely woken up.

“… and Meg Masters’ been having an excellent autumn so far, hasn’t she?” Gabriel was saying.

Despite himself, Castiel started paying attention.

“Absolutely, she has been slaying it,” Alfie replied. “Her album was on the first spot of Billboard for weeks, all her concerts in California and Las Vegas were sold out. I’m being told it’s the same case here at the Showbox at the Market. There’s people camping outside, and her hotel is absolutely surrounded.”

“So madness is expected tonight.”

“Well, it’s Halloween,” Alfie laughed. “Madness is expected everywhere, but specially at a Meg Masters’ concert. In any case I’ve been given a special pass for the backstage, so I’m going to be reporting and taking pictures. My Twitter account is at cutestangel, and you can follow me to experience the concert as if you were there.”

“Awesome. In the meantime, you can enjoy Meg’s latest single, _Cold Faith_ , available now on ITunes.”

Castiel finished dressing and stopped for a second to hear the familiar notes invading the air.

_Been wondering this labyrinth for so long_

_Just dreaming about coming home_

_I am finally finding my cause…_

It had been two months since _Indestructible_ was released, two months since Meg had left. He had promised himself he wasn’t going to think about it too much, but of course, he couldn’t keep her out of his mind. Every night when he went to bed, he spent at least a couple of hours staring into the darkness, wondering how she would be doing, if she’d been eating well, if she’d been sleeping well, if she’d been smoking too much or if she’d been torturing her roadies with a series of pranks. In more than one occasion he was tempted to call her and ask what she was doing, but had stopped at the last second.

Besides, what could he even to talk to her about? He couldn’t complain. The apartment was big, decorated in elegant black and white, with all the latest technology in house appliances. He could program the coffee maker to have a freshly brewed pot at whatever hour he desired. That was insane.

He missed Silverbell and its warm colors; he missed the grand piano and the sun coming in trough the enormous windows.

He felt lonely those days. The kids in the band were wonderful, it was true, but he couldn’t connect with them the way he had connected with Meg. Most of their writing sessions consisted on them shouting ideas from different ends of the apartment, making a lot of noise with their instruments and Castiel jotting it down whenever he found a noise that could be turned into music. The truth was, the four of them were already an organic unit and didn’t really need his help, so his presence there served more as a talisman to give them the confidence that the label still believed in them.

He missed arguing over the smallest details. He missed _her_.

But he couldn’t just randomly call and tell her that. She was probably so busy she hadn’t even thought about him a single time.

He finished gulping down his coffee and crossed the hall. As usual, he found the other apartment in complete disarray. The kids were already awake (he was pretty certain because they hadn’t gone to sleep yet), and fussing over something on Alexis laptop.

“I don’t think we should tell him,” Krissy whispered.

“Are you mad? Of course we have to tell him,” Josephine replied in the same tone.

“But what if he shuts down and can’t compose anymore?” Aiden argued.

“Guys, come on, do you really think he doesn’t know already?”

“Hey,” Castiel greeted them, and the four of them at the same time stood up like obedient little soldiers they weren’t to form a wall around the computer. “What are you watching?”

“Nothing!” Alexis replied, way too fast for it to be true.

“Just a gossips site that says Meg’s dating a dude that isn’t you!” Aiden confessed. Krissy grabbed his ear and twisted it until he screamed.

“Oh,” Castiel said, numbly. “Okay.”

He went directly to the table where the music sheets from the day before had ended and started shifting until he found the one he was looking for. Perhaps because he felt like somebody had kicked him in the liver, it took him a moment to realize the kids weren’t taking their positions.

“What?” he asked. The four pretended they hadn’t been staring at him and scurried away to look for their instruments.

“Hey,” Alexis, the only one who stayed behind, stood up to put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” Castiel lied.

“Well, it’s just that we thought…” Alexis started, tilting her head, clearly confused. “Weren’t you two…?”

“No, no,” Castiel shook his head. “No, we never… we became close friends while working on the album, but… no. It was never like that… who is this person she’s supposedly dating again?”

“You know, the model slash actor that was in her video,” Alexis explained. “Gadreel or whatever. Apparently he’s been calling ahead to flower shops in the towns where she gives concerts so there’s always a bouquet in her dressing room.”

“Oh. That’s very thoughtful of him,” Castiel groaned.

“Really? I think he really needs to step up his game,” Krissy commented, as she and Josephine reappeared with their guitar and bass. “She’s not going to fall for that.”

“Yeah, in a 2010 interview for a magazine that named her Sexiest Woman in Rock, she said she didn’t care for flowers and such,” Josephine added. “That what she looked for was a partner in crime who could understand her personally and artistically. That’s why we figured you were it.”

“Okay, let me see if I get this straight,” Aiden intervened. “You were living with Meg Masters, for what, months? And it never once occurred to you to ask her out?”

“It wasn’t like I didn’t think about it,” Castiel said, starting to get slightly irritated at this sudden interrogation about his personal affairs. “She was recovering from a relationship with an ass, and she clearly told me _with her own words_ that she wasn’t interested in having another one just yet.”

“So you get friend-zoned,” Aiden concluded. “Sucks to be you.”

“Well, I mean, who’s to say there’s any truth to it anyway?” Alexis said, obviously trying to cheer Castiel up after Aiden had basically just sent him into a suicidal state. “For all we know it’s just baseless gossip.”

“Yeah, or maybe he is sending her flowers and shit, but she might not even like him back,” Krissy suggested.

They turned to Josephine, who seemed to be lost deep in thought until Krissy elbowed her.

“Nah, I think she’s in love,” she stated simply. “I mean, have you seen the video?”

“What video?”

Two minutes later, Josephine was passing several YouTube recordings of Meg in her concerts.

“Ah, here it is,” she said, clicking one labeled: “Meg Masters, live in Las Vegas, last song.”

The video looked a little blurry, like it had been recorded by a cellphone. Meg was sitting in a dark stage, with her acoustic guitar on her lap, calmly adjusting the pegs like there weren’t hundreds of people staring at her and eagerly waiting for her to sing. She finished, and gently played a few notes Castiel recognized immediately.

“Oh, you know it,” Meg said, smiling satisfied when the crowd cheered. “This one’s for a friend who makes me feel indestructible.”

She practically whispered the words in the microphone, with her fans singing along and raising their cellphones.

_Like a lazy summer dawn_

_He’s warm and he’s gentle_

_My sky-eyed boy…_

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Castiel said, closing the laptop. But his hands were shaking a little and his brain was going to all sorts of places he shouldn’t be going: what if they were right? What if Meg meant something else by it?

What if she had written than song for him? She never really said anything about it, but maybe…

“There’s one way you could know for sure,” Alexis said, in a very low tone of voice. Castiel turned to look at her. “You could ask her…”

 

* * *

 

“Really, again?” Meg sighed when she crossed the door to her dressing room.

The bouquet was waiting for her, infallible. The first time she had seen it, after the first concert of the tour in Sacramento; her heart had made a backflip on her chest. But as soon as she’d read the car, the excitement had gone. She’d called Gadreel to thank him, and apparently, he’d taken that as an invitation to keep sending them. In the end, Meg had to call him again to ask him to stop.

“Listen, this is sweet and everything, but you can’t keep doing it,” she’d said. “My producer is mad at me because the press is beginning to talk.”

“Well, then, maybe we should give them something to talk about, huh?”

Meg had excused herself and hung up at that point. She’d dealt with enough smug actors in her life to know that if he was decided not to take a hint when she was throwing it at his face, then he certainly wasn’t going to no matter how polite or insistent she was. Sure enough, there had been bouquets at every single concert she’d been on. She simply threw them away without even checking the card. Not that it made a difference: for most gossip sites, she and Gadreel were practically engaged at this point.

She stepped in front of the mirror to do her make-up. She still had forty-five minutes before the opening band (some local kids whose clothes looked like something right out of a Nirvana video) finished their act and she had to go on stage. She couldn’t believe what a nervous wreck she’d been the first time she stepped back onto a stage, but it really was just like riding a bike. As soon as her body adjusted again to the schedule, everything had gone incredibly smoothly.

Well, except because she kept checking her phone and counting the days. That never happened. When she was in tour mode, Meg usually lost track of time until someone asked: “Hey, what are you doing for Christmas?” and only then she noticed it had been three months since she’d left her home (or wherever she was staying at that particular moment of her life).

This time was different. This time, she knew exactly how long it’d been since she left Silverbell, how long since she last talked to Castiel. It had been two months without a phone call, an e-mail, hell, even a damn text.

“If you’re so anxious, sista’, why don’t you call him yourself?” Benny had asked when she’d woken him up with her dilemma at two in the morning.

Well, she would have. Except she didn’t know what schedule was Castiel keeping those days, and he was probably really busy, she didn’t want to throw him off his creative process and yes, she knew she was avoiding and making excuses for herself, what is your point, Benny?

“Meg,” Benny had yawned. “I really can’t tell you what to do this time.”

Somebody opened the door and Meg’s hand slipped, completely ruining her eyeliner.

“Sorry,” Dean said, but that didn’t stop Meg from glaring at him while she wiped the make up to start again. “Security paged me. Apparently there’s a guy at the entrance saying he’s your friend and trying to get in sans ticket. What do I tell them?”

Meg cringed visibly. She knew Gadreel was a model, but could he really be that dense?

“Tell them to hold him off,” she said, returning to the very intricate issue of getting her make up right. “If he’s still around by the end of the concert, I’ll talk to him.”

“Are you sure? It’s getting kind of chilly out there,” Dean pointed out.

“Poor thing,” Meg replied. “Let’s hope it doesn’t start raining too.”

Dean snickered maliciously and left the dressing room while saying something to his walkie-talkie. Meg finished getting ready without any more incidents.

“Alright,” Meg told to her reflection. “Let’s go for it.”

The crowd cheered and screamed when the lights went out and the first notes of _Indestructible_ filled the air. Meg made a point to start the concerts with that song, because she needed to remind herself that she was putting herself out there because she loved what she did and no one could take that away from her. Because every night, she needed to see the same thing Castiel had seen in her.

_Go ahead; take your best shot_

_I’ll spit you in the eye_

_Beaten and bleeding and bruised_

_I’ll stand up and shout to your face:_

She pointed her mic at the crowd, and they all roared in unison: “YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME!”

Meg smiled, bathing in the power that simple statement. In moments like those, she truly believed it.

She would later remember that night as one of the best concerts of her entire tour. The crowd was completely in sync with her, as she sang and jumped and shred the notes in her guitar. She even dared (against all Dean’s recommendations) to jump out of the stage, and she was caught by a thousand of hands that held her up in the air, chanting her name at the top of their lungs. By the end of it, she was exhausted, sweaty and blinded by the light, and there was nothing in the world she’d like more than going back to her hotel room and sleep for fourteen hours.

However, she had to stay long after her back-up players had left (which was a shame, because they looked like a rowdy bunch). She only had five minute to shower and prepare herself for the five groups that had earned meet-and-greets thank to a contest with the local radio station. She liked that part. Despite the awesomeness of playing a sold out concert, despite the thousands of tweets she received every day, she still was convinced nothing beat face to face interaction with the fans, so put on her best smile, signed their copies of the CD and their posters, and received their gifts with infinite gratitude.

“This is so cute,” she told the last girl, a blonde seventeen-year-old that had given her a Grumpy Cat plush doll. “Thank you so much!”

“Thanks to you,” the girl said, giving her a quick hug before Dean escorted her and her friends out.

“The usual crowd’s gathered up outside, and it’s drizzling,” he informed her. “You may wanna put on your hoodie.”

Meg groaned. ‘The usual crowd’ meant the theater was surrounded by paparazzi and they couldn’t run them over, so they would have to extract themselves painfully slow from the parking lot. She pulled the hood over her head and held the plushie close to her chest. The Showbox’s security team had formed a cordon in front of the paparazzi so all she had to worry about were the flashes exploding in her face and ignoring the screams of “Meg, Meg, look over here, please!”

She kept her head down until Dean opened the door for her and she could finally rest her forehead against the window. The glass was polarized, so there was no risk that they would took a picture of her tired and disgruntled expression as she took out a cigarette and watched them raising cameras in her direction while they moved towards the street and…

There was a man trying to make his way through the crowd of photographers. He was ducking and elbowing, but the photographers refused to move out for him. One of them even pushed him against the security cordon, so Meg caught a glimpse of his face just as they finally reached the street

“Stop the car!”

“What?”

“Stop the car, Dean, right now!”

Dean hesitated, but ultimately obeyed.

“Hey, don’t do that!” he shouted, but Meg was already launching herself out of the SUV. Her cigarette pack fell from her pocket and ended up somewhere on the asphalt.

She might be making a terrible mistake. Between the rain, the flashes and her own exhaustion she might have seen incorrectly or…

“Cas?!” she called out.

The guy currently being pushed against the security team looked up. His hair looked disheveled, like he had slept while sitting, he was trembling in his soaked clothes and his cheeks were red from having to fight against all those hysterical pseudo-journalists.

But he was _there_.

“Let him through,” Meg told the bouncers. “Let him through, I know him!”

It still took a couple of minutes for them to step aside for Castiel without letting any of the photographers also get too close to Meg. Finally, he stumbled away from the crowd and practically crashed into Meg.

“Cas, what the fuck?” Meg screamed at him.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel replied, looking down at his shoes, embarrassed. “I’ve been waiting for you four hours and I kind of fell asleep so I couldn’t…”

“Hours?” Meg repeated, and then it dawned on her that he had been the one trying to get in to see her without a ticket. “What… why didn’t you tell them it was you?”

“I tried, they wouldn’t believe me,” Castiel said, hugging himself. “But I heard the whole thing from outside, you were… you were fantastic, I…”

Meg stared at his face in disbelief, and then burst into laughing. He had come all the way from California, waited for her in the rain, and the only thing he managed to do was congratulate her on her concert? It was just too surreal.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing, nothing… I’m just so glad to see you, it’s all,” Meg said, and it was true. “Oh, my God, you’re shivering. Come on, let’s get you to the hotel and you can tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”

She was aware the whole exchanged was being photographed and maybe recorded, but she didn’t care much when she put an arm around Castiel’s shoulder and tried to get him to walk to the SUV before the rain got any worse.

“Actually… Meg, stop,” he said. “I’m sorry, I know this is not the time or the place, but I-I need to know,” he stammered. “Are you dating Gadreel?”

“What?” Meg halted to study his face, and realized that he was completely serious. “You came all the way from L. A. to ask me that?”

Castiel stopped to think, and then he too seemed to realize the hilarity of the situation, because an awkward smile appeared on his face, and then he too was cracking up, covering his face with his hands.

“No,” Meg said, when he’d calmed down enough to listen to her. “I’m not dating him. It’s just a stupid rumor, Cas, I…”

She stopped herself. She didn’t know what she had been trying to say exactly, but Castiel’s face was lighting up like she didn’t even need to. Like he already knew.

“Good,” he said, nodding in relief. “Good, I’m very glad.”

The droplets had become thicker and it’s stomping against the roof of the car was the only sound now, as everyone watching them had gone quiet, maybe foreseeing something very important was about to happen.

And that was about the time Meg decided she needed to stop being a fool. Castiel was there, he had come there for her. He didn’t need her to protect him or make decisions for him, he was a big boy. And for reasons that were beyond her understanding, he had chosen to come to her that night. He had chosen _her_.

Almost as if he had read her thoughts, he extended her arms towards her at the same time she took a step towards him. The result was that she was standing very close to his personal space, and he had his arms around his waist. Meg put her hands on his cheeks.

“Don’t do it unless you mean it,” Castiel asked her, in a whisper that was meant only for her.

“I mean it,” Meg assured him. She stood on the tip of her toes, pulling Castiel down towards her at the same time. Their lips met halfway.

Time stopped for a heartbeat or two. Meg held Castiel so tight, pulling him close as if she was trying to melt against him. His hair was wet underneath the fingers she ran through them, and his lips were warm and firm, delicate as they search for her mouth, like he still hesitated, like he still couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Meg couldn’t believe it either. She was still half-convinced she was dreaming, because nothing in life had ever made her felt so lightheaded and euphoric, so convinced that she was exactly where she was supposed to.

When they broke away, Castiel had to hold Meg’s entire weight because her knees were trembling too much. The flashes were exploding like crazy behind the cordon, and the rain had become a steady downpour over them. Dean was screaming at them to get inside the SUV before Meg caught a cold and the entire tour had to be cancelled, but the only thing she was registering was the way Castiel’s eyes shone while looking at her and how he was smiling wider than she’d ever seen.

 

* * *

 

There was a bell ringing somewhere in his left. Castiel extended his hand, without even trying to open his eyes and pressed what he hoped would be the “end” button. He didn’t have that luck.

“Hello, hello?” a female voice said coming from the cellphone. “You better answer me, this is important…”

Castiel yawned as the wheels in his mind started turning lazily. He recognized Jo’s voice. And suddenly, he remembered he had abandoned four promising young musicians in California to run after Meg, and that probably did not look like good work ethics on his part.

He fidgeted with the phone until he managed to put it against his ear.

“Jo,” he said. “I’m sorry, I…”

“Cas?!” Jo screamed in his ear. “Why are you there?”

“I’m really… I shouldn’t have…”

“Why are you on picking up Meg’s phone?” Jo insisted.

Castiel finally opened his eyes, forcing himself to take in the light of day bathing the room. The side of the bed next to him was undone but empty.

“Oh, my God, you’re the guy aren’t you?” Jo asked.

“The… guy?” Castiel repeated, still confused.

“The guy Meg is kissing in all those pictures!” Jo explained, starting to speak way too fast for Castiel to follow. “I mean, I thought it was you, but they’re all blurry because of the rain, and I figured, no, it can’t be, he’s in California, what would he be doing in Seattle… why are you in Seattle?! You’re supposed to be in California composing with Alexis and her band!”

Castiel had the impulse to end the call just so he could put his ideas in order, but in that moment, the door creaked open and Meg walked in carrying resting in them. She was wearing the shapeless, ugly clothing she used when she wanted to go unnoticed. She pulled off her baseball cap as she walked in and pulled her aviator glasses up to look at Castiel a little confused.

“It’s Jo…” he mouthed.

Meg left the cups in the night-table on her side of the bed and snatched the phone from his hands.

“Hey, Jo, PSA,” she said. “Castiel and I are dating. Officially. Tweet it. Facebook it. Give a press conference. I don’t really care. Just make sure to let everyone know all rumors linking me to any other person are a fake. You got that? Good. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to have a morning quickie with my boyfriend. What, you want to hear us having sex? Didn’t think so. Bye, Jo.”

She threw her phone over the carpet and jumped on the bed without even kicking her shoes off.

“There,” she said, passing one of the cups of coffee to Castiel. “I hope that would clear all future confusions so you don’t have to go chasing me around anymore.”

“You’d like me to go chasing you around,” he joked, narrowing his eyes at her.

She stuck her tongue out at him, and Castiel laughed out loud.

The night before he had tried to suggest maybe he should get a room on his own, to keep it… he didn’t really know. Meg had dragged him into her room, ignoring all of his excuses, and had helped him remove his soaked clothes. And then she’d jumped with him on the shower and asked him if he really wanted to sleep somewhere else. She’d made a compelling point.

Then they had got under the covers and talked for hours.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Why didn’t _you_?” Meg had lashed back. But she didn’t sound angry, just curious and relaxed under Castiel’s ministrations.

“I thought you’d be busy,” Castiel had said, but that was only the excuse he had repeated so many times he’d ended up believing. The truth was: “After last time we talked, I… I figured it’d be too painful. I figured you still didn’t want… but when I heard about Gadreel…”

“You jumped into a plane and came to me?” Meg had chuckled, closing her eyes. “That’s pretty dramatic.”

“Not as dramatic as leaving me waiting four hours in the rain,” he’d groaned. Meg laughed again and snuggled her nose against his neck.

“I didn’t call because I didn’t think you’d want this,” she’d muttered. “Everything that implies being with me, I thought…”

“I want this,” Castiel had replied, kissing her slightly in the shoulder. “All of this.”

“Well, I know that now,” she’d said, raising her head. “And I’m happy, Cas. I really haven’t been this happy in a while.”

She looked it: her eyes were shinning, and her smile was wide. She’d looked radiant in a way that he hadn’t seen before, and it wasn’t just her basking in the afterglow, although that definitely made her looked more beautiful than he thought it was possible.

He felt happy too. Not elated as he had last night, but invaded by a kind of serene happiness, the kind of happiness you felt coming home after a long trip. A happiness that indicated that everything was as it was supposed to be.

“Here’s to the morning after,” Meg joked, and they toasted with their cups of coffee. “Sorry we couldn’t have the cliché of you walking in the kitchen while I’m making breakfast wearing nothing but your shirt.”

“I like this more,” Castiel said, honestly. Meg beamed and looked away, so he put the coffee aside and wrap an arm around her waist. “So I’m your boyfriend now, huh?”

“Well, I mean, if you like that,” Meg shrugged, but she was still not looking at him. “We can call it something else, if you want, like… I don’t know. Friends with benefits, or…”

Castiel put a hand on her cheek and made her look at him.

“I like boyfriend.”

Meg let out a sigh and sank on the bed until they were both on the same level, staring eye to eye.

“What happens now?” Castiel asked, delicately running his fingers through her hair.

“Well, right now, our pictures are everywhere,” Meg said. “Everyone and their mothers are forming an opinion about you and me, if you’re good for me, if I looked happy, if it’s a publicity stunt. By this time tomorrow, you’re officially going to be Meg Masters’ boyfriend, and paparazzi are going to go around following you, trying to catch you red-handed cheating on me.”

“Sounds stressful,” Castiel reckoned.

“In about five hours, I’ve got to catch a plane to Denver,” Meg continued. “And you have to go back to babysit your future legendary band. And I’m guessing we’re not going to see each other until I’ve finished with the tours, so whatever we have to talk about, we should do it now.”

It was fair. Castiel started:

“Can I call you at whatever hour and for whatever reason?”

“Yes,” Meg nodded. “Can I?”

“Absolutely. Can I write you fifteen e-mails a day to know how you’re doing?”

“Yes,” Meg replied. “Can I send you silly videos from backstage when I’m missing you?”

“Can I jump on a plane and see you even though you’re halfway across the country and there are no rumors linking you to handsome actors?”

“That’ll make Jo furious,” Meg smiled. “Of course.”

Castiel pulled Meg closer to him. “Will you keep me waiting outside?”

“Never again,” she promised, kissing him in the cheek. “Okay, we’re good? Awesome.”

Without any more ceremony, she straddled Castiel and took off her shirt. She hadn’t even bothered putting on a bra when she went out for the coffee. The piercing in her nipple glimmered in the morning light.

“What?” Meg asked, at Castiel’s stunned expression. “I said there was going to be a quickie happening.”

He burst out laughing while she leaned to kiss his neck. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rolled on the bed with her.


End file.
